Fascism, Anti-Fascism, and the Resistance in Italy: 1919 to the Present [1 ed.] 0742579719, 9780742579712

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ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A Member of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowmanlittlefield.com PO Box 317 Oxford OX2 9RU, UK Copyright © 2004 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fascism, anti-fascism, and the resistance in Italy : 1919 to the Present / Stanislao G. Pugliese. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 9780742579712 1. Fascism—Italy—History. 2. Anti-fascist movements—Italy—History. 3. Italy—Politics and government—20th century I. Pugliese, Stanislao G., 1965DG571.F267 2004 320.53’3’0945—dc22 2003019119 Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

For my parents, who lived with fascism and For my children, that they never will

Table of Contents

Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Acknowledgments Chronology Introduction - A Past That Will Not Pass: Fascism, Anti-Fascism, and the Resistance in Italy I - THE ROOTS OF FASCISM 1 - The Futurist Manifesto 2 - An Excerpt from Four and Twenty Minds 3 - The Vigil 4 - The Legacy of Nationalism II - THE BIRTH OF FASCISM AND THE EARLY OPPOSITION 5 - Afternoon Speech of 23 March 1919 6 - Squadrismo 7 - The March on Rome 8 - We Are of the People 9 - Our Protestantism III - THE CONSOLIDATION OF POWER AND THE ANTI-FASCIST RESPONSE 10 - The Fascisti Exposed 11 - Speech of 3 January 1925 12 - The Eternal Tendency toward Fascism 13 - Towards Anarchism IV - THE FASCIST STATE AND DISSIDENT VOICES 14 - The Doctrine of Fascism 15 - What Are We to Do? 16 - Letters from Women 17 - Aphorisms 18 - Operations against Individuals 19 - We Have No Need 20 - The Story of My Death 21 - The Basic Features of the Fascist Dictatorship

V - FASCIST AND ANTI-FASCIST CULTURE 22 - Fascist Anthems 23 - Mussolini the Man 24 - The Sacred Myths of Fascism 25 - The Fascist Decalogue 26 - Intellectuals and the Regime 27 - History as the Story of Liberty 28 - The Political Prisoner 29 - What Is Man? 30 - The Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution 31 - Grace 32 - The Nationalization of Women VI - FASCIST RACISM, ANTI-SEMITISM, AND THE HOLOCAUST 33 - Facetta Nera: Little Black Face 34 - Racial Manifesto 35 - The Word “Jew” 36 - Hunting Down the Jews 37 - Consider If This Is a Man 38 - A Woman Confronts the Holocaust VII - WAR: SPAIN, EUROPE, CIVIL 39 - Today in Spain, Tomorrow in Italy 40 - November 1943 41 - The Dead God 42 - Prisoner of War 43 - Anti-Fascist Anthems 44 - Threats Are Good for You 45 - The Four Days of Naples 46 - Civil War VIII - THE DEATH THROES OF FASCISM 47 - A Nation Collapses 48 - Manifesto of Verona 49 - A Letter before Dying 50 - Graffiti from a Nazi Prison 51 - Final Examination 52 - A Nazi Massacre IX - HISTORY, MEMORY, AND THE WRITING OF THE PAST 53 - Partisan Diary 54 - The Resistance “Vulgate” 55 - The Legacy of Fascism 56 - Eternal Fascism

57 - The Battle over the Past 58 - My Seven Sons 59 - Memory and Massacres Guide to Further Reading Glossary Index About the Editor

Acknowledgments A project of this scale and scope required the assistance and expertise of scholars, friends, and family. At Rowman & Littlefield, I was fortunate to work with editors Mary Carpenter, Laura Roberts, and Michael Marino. Friends, scholars, and colleagues generously offered their assistance, suggestions, and corrections; special thanks go to Alessandro Portelli, Alexander De Grand, Frank Rosengarten, Alexander Stille, Jomarie Alano, and Francesca Vassale. I would like to thank all the editors, publishers, and scholars who graciously granted permission for work to be reproduced here. A special thanks to Liana Miuccio, Philip V. Cannistraro, and Borden Painter for their photographs and Robert L. Miller of Enigma Books for permission to reprint photos of Italo Balbo and Mussolini with Hitler. Additional thanks go to the Istituto Storico della Resistenza in Toscana (Florence) and the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione (Rome) for their permission to use photographs from their collections. A previous version of this anthology was published in 2001 by Manchester University Press. The pieces in that edition were in the original Italian; this American edition is substantially revised, with three dozen excerpts that were not included in the earlier volume. The changes are substantial enough to warrant a different title for this volume. I thank Matthew Frost and Manchester University Press for permission to reprint a revised form of the introduction. I would like to acknowledge the generous support of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Hofstra University and my colleagues in the Department of History for their collegiality. A special thanks to Judy D’Angio, Linda Merklin, and the staff of Editorial Services for their help in the preparation of the manuscript. Antonio Pugliese deserves a special acknowledgment for his gracious permission to reproduce one of his paintings for the cover. Most important, I thank my wife, Jennifer Romanello, for her patience and our two children, Alessandro Antonio and Giulia Rosina, who were often in their father’s arms while this volume was being prepared. Finally, I wish to thank my parents, Angelo and Lena Pugliese, for their struggle in two very different lands. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If any proper acknowledgment has not been made, copyright holders are invited to inform the publisher of the oversight.

Chronology 1860-1861 Italy unified under a constitutional monarchy. 1914 World War I begins; demonstrations in Italy by interventionists and their opponents; Mussolini, as editor of Avanti!, advocates intervention and is expelled from the PSI. 1915 Italy enters the war on the side of the Entente. 1918 World War I ends; terms of the Treaty of London denied by Wilson; myth of the “mutilated victory” born. 1919 (23 March) Mussolini convenes the Fascio di combattimento in Piazza San Sepolcro. 1919-1922 Fascist violence in cities and countryside. 1922 (October) Mussolini threatens to “March on Rome.” 1922 (28 October) King Vittorio Emanuele III invites Mussolini to form a government. 1923 Fascist squadristi transformed into Voluntary Militia for National Security (MVSN). 1924 (May-June) Reform socialist deputy Matteotti denounces fascist electoral fraud and violence; his assassination precipitates the “Matteotti crisis” and the Aventine Secession. 1925 (3 January) In a speech before the Chamber of Deputies, Mussolini takes full responsibility for the Matteotti affair and challenges his opponents to remove him from office; King Vittorio Emanuele III refuses to ask for his resignation; the “Matteotti crisis” is overcome; beginnings of full dictatorship; Fuorusciti begin life in exile. 1926 Promulgation of Exceptional Laws (outlawing freedom of the press, of association, and of political parties) effectively ends liberal parliamentary system in Italy and destroys the legal anti-fascist opposition. Regime inaugurates the Special Tribunal for the Defense of the State and OVRA (secret police). 1929 Justice and Liberty founded in Paris; establishes cells in northern and central Italy. 1935-1936 Ethiopian War. 1936-1939 Italian fascist and anti-fascist intervention in the Spanish Civil War. 1937 (27 April) Antonio Gramsci dies in prison; (9 June) Rosselli brothers assassinated. 1939 (September) Nazi Germany invades Poland; World War II begins; Mussolini delays joining his Axis partner.

1940 (10 June) With the fall of France imminent on the anniversary of the Matteotti assassination, Mussolini declares war on France and Britain. 1940-1943 Military debacles in Greece, Albania, North Africa, Russia. 1943 (9-10 July) Allied troops land in Sicily; (25 July) Fascist Grand Council votes “no confidence” in Mussolini, who is removed from office by the king; Marshal Pietro Badoglio is named prime minister and announces via radio that “the war continues.” 1943 (8 September) Italy signs an armistice with the Allies who accept the country as a “cobelligerent;” the next day the CLN (Committee of National Liberation) is formed. 1943-1945 Civil war in Italy. 1945 (25 April) Uprising in Milan. 1945 (27-28 April) Mussolini captured and executed. 1945 (19 June) Ferruccio Parri of the Action Party named prime minister. 1945 (24 November) Parri government falls. 1946 (2 June) A Constituent Assembly is elected to draft a new constitution and the monarchy ended; Italy becomes a republic. 1948 (1 January). The new constitution takes effect.

Italy since 1919. (Reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press.)

Introduction A Past That Will Not Pass: Fascism, Anti-Fascism, and the Resistance in Italy Stanislao G. Pugliese Even before World War II came to an end in Italy, the political and intellectual battle over the ultimate meaning and significance of fascism and the armed Resistance was joined. Had fascism been a revolution that radically changed Italy and the Italians? Or was it merely the violent reaction of a morally and politically bankrupt bourgeoisie threatened by a socialist revolution? Was the regime a revelation of deep-rooted historical, economic, and social problems that could be traced back to a failed Risorgimento, the movement for national unification in the nineteenth century? Had Mussolini been a buffoon, a manipulator, an opportunist; had he been a “sincere” revolutionary; had he indeed made the trains run on time and saved Italy from a Bolshevik revolution; had he committed his “only” mistake in allying himself with Hitler in the mid-1930s? Was the armed Resistance an illegal movement that betrayed the nation and 8 September 1943 a betrayal of Italy’s Axis partner, Nazi Germany? Or was the Resistenza a second—and truly popular—Risorgimento, bringing the masses into the struggle for a democratic republic founded on the principles of social justice and individual liberty? Had the regime fostered a genuine consensus, or was the populace coerced into political silence? Was fascism an early form of totalitarianism, or was there room for artists, writers, intellectuals, and individuals to think and create on their own? Were the fascist and Nazi massacres of civilians legitimate acts of war or crimes against humanity? Was the Italian Communist Party (PCI)—the largest and most influential of the anti-fascist forces—a patriotic organization or the tool of Stalin’s Soviet Union? Were the anti-fascist activities of sabotage, killings, and executions of Mussolini and fascists legitimate acts of war or acts of terrorism? Had the pernicious effects of fascism ended on 25 April 1945 (the date usually understood to mean the end of the war in Italy), or were they to infect the very foundations of the Italian Republic as it emerged after the war? Interpretations and readings of the fascist ventennio and the anti-fascist Resistance have proven to be extraordinarily contentious for more than half a century. The fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war in 1995 served as a catalyst for a major reexamination of the issues that bore more than a passing resemblance to the infamous Historikerstriet (historians’ debate) over the nature of Nazism in Germany during the 1980s. In short, fascism and the Resistance

perform a similar function to the French Revolution in France: Historians, intellectuals, and public figures are forced to take a stand and their political philosophy immediately recognized by their scholarly stance. Ideals of history as a social science grounded in objectivity are—for better or worse—not the dominant intellectual framework in Italy. Some anti-fascists, such as Ugo La Malfa of the Italian Republican Party (PRI) argued that a broad coalition of anti-fascist parties would be necessary to effect the necessary break with the pre-fascist past. In May 1944, La Malfa charged that “Italy has never been a real democracy” and called for a “progressive democracy” that avoided the injustices of both the liberal and the Marxist state.1 La Malfa was echoing the heretical ideas first proposed by the liberal socialist Carlo Rosselli in the 1920s. This indictment of the status quo ante could not go unchallenged. In a radio broadcast on 1 September 1944, Pope Pius XII offered a religious justification of private property, while Alcide De Gasperi, the leader of the Christian Democracy (DC), would write that “anti-fascism is a contingent political phenomenon, which will at a certain moment be overturned by other political ideals more in keeping with the... feelings of Italian public life, for the good and the progress of the nation.” 2 Ada Gobetti of the Action Party (Partito d’Azione) spoke for many in this later recollection: In a confusing way I sensed, however, that another struggle was beginning: Longer, more difficult, more tiring, even if less bloody. It was no longer the question of fighting against arrogance, cruelty, and violence ... but ... of not allowing that little flame of solidarity and fraternal humanism, which we had seen born, to die in the calm atmosphere of an apparent return to normal life.3 In a famous speech on 26 September 1945, Prime Minister Ferruccio Parri shocked his audience by echoing Piero Gobetti and Rosselli: “I do not believe that the governments we had before fascism can be called democratic.” For the new prime minister, the legacy of the antifascist Resistance was that it was the only democratic movement in the history of Italy that the masses had supported. With the Resistance, both fascism and the nineteenth-century liberal state based on formal law had been superseded. “We can say that in the history of anti-fascism all the best traditions of the Italian spirit ... are summed up and gathered together and guide it to successive liberating stages, beginning with the first enlightenment revolution of the eighteenth century.”4 Italy had been unified as a constitutional monarchy in 1860-1861. As great an achievement as this was, there were problems from the start. The Italian peninsula had not been united since the last days of the Roman Empire. The papacy and Europeans of all nationalities had fought constant wars over control of the peninsula, effectively preventing unification. The brief Roman Republic of 1849 established by Giuseppe Garibaldi was crushed when the pope called in French troops to protect his temporal power. When unification finally was achieved in 1860, it came through the intercession of Napoleon III and Count Camillo Benso di Cavour’s cleverly maneuvering the Austrians into a foolish war. Rome was incorporated into the new

nation-state only after Napoleon III was forced to withdraw his troops during the FrancoPrussian War of 1870-1871. Modern Italy, as the Italians have often pointed out, was the creation of shrewd politics, a restricted political elite, petty maneuvers, crafty statesmanship, and tacit accommodations. Although Giuseppe Mazzini had offered a clear moral idealism and Garibaldi charismatic leadership, the masses failed to participate. In fact, when the new nation-state was formed, only 2.5 percent of the population spoke “Italian”; most spoke only their local dialect. The new king, Vittorio Emanuele II of the House of Savoy, spoke Piedmontese dialect and French (no Italian) and never ventured south of Florence. Tellingly, the king refused to change his name to Vittorio Emanuele I of Italy. For the next six decades, political power shifted between a Historic Right and Left. Italy was an overwhelmingly rural and agricultural country with a high rate of illiteracy. Perhaps the most damning critique of the new country was the massive wave of emigration that decimated the Mezzogiorno (south) in the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century. Economists and social historians have documented how the plight of the peasants and landless workers worsened after unification. Only in the relatively prosperous northern triangle of Milan, Turin, and Genoa did conditions improve for the proletariat, while agrarian practices improved somewhat for peasants and farmers in the Po River valley. Industrialization and modernization created severe problems for the new nation. Industrial and agrarian strikes were common; army troops were often called out to restore order, resulting in many deaths. New mass political parties, the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and the Italian Popular (Catholic) Party (PPI) came into being in 1892 and 1919, respectively. The former was lacerated by an internal ideological division between intransigent revolutionaries who believed in a violent overthrow of Italian society, and reformists who felt that it was possible to improve the lot of the working classes through legislation and collaboration with the government. The PPI was formed in the wake of some long-term trends in modern Catholic politics and as a mass-based party to counteract the influence of the PSI, but it was caught almost immediately in the crossfire between socialism and fascism. Don Luigi Sturzo (18711959), born in Sicily, was a leading anti-fascist and the founder of the PCI. His interest in the economic and social problems of the Mezzogiorno led him to establish a cassa rurale (peasant credit fund) and agricultural cooperative in 1897. In 1919, the PPI came into existence and changed the face of electoral politics in Italy; the PPI became, along with the PSI, the largest political party in Italy. The growing influence of fascism in the early 1920s caused friction among the PPI, the Vatican, and Mussolini. When it became apparent that the Vatican would support fascism, Sturzo was forced to resign as leader of the PPI in July 1923. Several months later, he made his way into an exile that would last twenty years, first to London (where he barely escaped death from the bombings during World War II), then to New York. In one of the earliest anti-fascist books, his Pensiero antifascista (1925), he implicitly points out the obvious conflict between Christianity and fascism. Social unrest came to a head in June 1914 with the so-called settimana rossa—a week of general strikes and socialist- and anarchist-inspired insurrections across the country. The country would soon be riven by a far greater trauma.

World War I fractured whatever fragile consensus had been built in the young nation. Allied to Germany and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire for geopolitical reasons rather than compatibility and contrary to what one might have expected historically, Italy was one of the few countries to avoid being immediately drawn into the cauldron in August 1914. In truth, Italian politicians were secretly negotiating with both sides for better terms before deciding which side to join. In the end, the Treaty of London that brought Italy into the war on the side of the Entente included secret clauses promising Italy compensation in the form of land to be confiscated from a defeated Austria-Hungary; Italy subsequently declared war on AustriaHungary in May 1915 and on Germany in 1916. This was the “about-face” that was not forgotten by the Germans in 1943 when Italy switched sides in the course of World War II. The PSI was the only European socialist party that remained true to its internationalist principles and refused to advocate Italy’s entrance into the war, unlike its counterparts in Germany and France. Benito Mussolini, the editor of the party’s daily Avanti! staunchly defended the policy of nonintervention in 1914. The revolutionary socialist Mussolini had captured the party leadership in 1912 after the reformists in the PSI were expelled for endorsing Italy’s Libyan War with the Ottoman Empire. As 1914 progressed into 1915, Mussolini had a change of heart; Italian nationalists such as Enrico Corradini and revolutionary syndicalists such as Alceste De Ambris were clamoring for intervention, and Mussolini eventually agreed with their position. He was consequently dismissed as editor of Avanti! and expelled from the PSI. In November 1915, he founded his own newspaper, II Popolo d’Italia. Mussolini, became increasingly anti-socialist and nationalistic; sentiments that only increased after his own experience during the war. Participation in World War I was a defining moment for millions of Italians. Many of the soldiers were impoverished peasants, and most had never ventured far beyond their own poor village. Many of the officers, instead, were from northern or central Italy, many from aristocratic or bourgeois families; consequently, different social classes “discovered” each other for the first time. The “war generation” was to have an enormous impact on the subsequent peace in Italy. Returning trinceristi (veterans of horrific trench warfare) and arditi (assault troops) scorned the values and tranquility of civilian life. The compensation due Italy by the secret clauses of the Treaty of London was annulled by American president Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, and although Italy did gain something at the Versailles Peace Conference, the myth of the “mutilated victory” was born. Italy had suffered six hundred thousand casualties and a possible invasion by Austria-Hungary after the disastrous defeat at Caporetto in the autumn of 1917. Italians felt that they were to receive precious little in return for such a sacrifice. The successful Vittorio Veneto offensive one year later ended the war, but the scars remained. Those scars were evident when Mussolini convened disgruntled veterans and political orphans in Milan’s Piazza San Sepolcro on 23 March 1919 and declared the formation of the first fascio di combattimento. The program was leftist and revolutionary: demands for a republic, universal suffrage and proportional representation, abolition of the Senate, an eighthour workday, a minimum wage for workers, an end to Italian imperialism, and participation of workers in management. Humiliating defeats in the elections of 1919 convinced Mussolini that

he would never come to power with a left-wing program. In 1920 and 1921, the fascio di combattimento dropped its revolutionary demands, eventually gaining the support of large sections of the Italian bourgeoisie and the governing class. Critical was the evolution of agrarian fascism in the Italian countryside; violent blackshirt gangs (squadristi) attacked and destroyed peasant cooperatives established by socialists and Catholic organizations. These “punitive expeditions” often ended with the murder of socialist and anarchist organizers, and the large landowners were won over to fascism. Mussolini often had a difficult time controlling the more “enthusiastic” of the squadristi such as Italo Balbo and Roberto Farinacci, but eventually his dominance was recognized by all. Friction between an urban, revolutionary fascism and an agrarian, reactionary fascism was to haunt Mussolini periodically for the next two decades. Mussolini often boasted in the early days of the movement that fascism did not advocate a coherent ideology. It was only after a decade in power that the need was felt for an official doctrine explaining fascist ideology (chapter 14). In truth, fascism was a heterogeneous mixture of radical ideologies that had been brewing during the nineteenth century. From Gustav Le Bon, Mussolini learned something about the psychology of crowds; from the French political theorist Georges Sorel, he was impressed with the theories of violence, myth, revolutionary syndicalism, and the general strike; from the German philosopher Friederich Nietzsche, Mussolini misappropriated the theory of the Übermensch or superman who is “beyond good and evil.” Futurism, an avant-garde aesthetic movement founded by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909 (chapter 1), seemed a natural ally. In a 1910 essay titled “Che cos’è il Futurismo?” Marinetti answered that futurism signified hatred of the past and proposed to destroy the “culto del passato” and “la tirannia dell’amore” in order to free artists. Because of its glorification of industrialization, technology, and war, futurism was embraced by the early fascist movement. Another intellectual movement that was to influence early fascism was the irrationalism and mysticism popular in some late nineteenth-century circles. Here the cult of genius prevailed. Giovanni Papini and Ardengo Soffici were leading proponents of this movement (chapter 2). Nations could crumble and empires sink into the sea, so long as people were able to create beauty. A frenetic desire to live life to the fullest—perhaps because of an impending sense of doom—characterized these artists and intellectuals. Gabriele D’Annunzio—poet, sensualist, adventurer—personified this worldview. In September 1919, D’Annunzio led a band of veterans and “captured” the city of Fiume on the Adriatic coast of the Istrian peninsula. For little more than a year, D‘Annunzio ruled Fiume like a Renaissance condottiere with a modernist twist: speeches from balconies, black uniforms, hymns and salutes to the charismatic leader. This “fascist system of rule” was taken over by Mussolini whole. These unstable elements—the rabid nationalism of Corradini and others, the irrationalism of Henri Bergson, the syndicalism of Georges Sorel, the decadent romanticism of D’Annunzio leading to the cult and even eroticization of death—were all thrown into the cauldron of early fascist ideology. The result was often a tension between the more radical and revolutionary elements, and those components and supporters who were more conservative. Indeed, one of the major historiographical debates concerning fascism is the proposed

division between “fascism as movement” and “fascism as regime.” The former supposedly was revolutionary, the second reactionary; “fascism as movement” sought a radical transformation of Italian society with a stress on youth that was embodied in the fascist hymn “Giovinezza” (chapter 22). This revolutionary fascism sought to create a new “fascist man” in a cultural revolution during the 1930s. Although in theory revolutionary fascism was to take over the apparatus of the state, it was subdued by the inertia and conservatism of preexisting institutions and mentalities. The revolutionary movement was thus transformed into a regime that was less disruptive to the conservative institutions of Italian society such as the military, the diplomatic corps, the civil service, industrialists, large landowners, and the Catholic Church. Historians point to the contrast with Nazi Germany. There, the National Socialist Party completely overwhelmed all the institutions and the entire apparatus of the German state; conversely, in Italy, the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF) was supposedly overwhelmed by the state. The political situation in postwar Italy continued its precipitous decline. Prime Ministers Vittorio Emanuele Orlando and Antonio Salandra were not up to the challenges facing the country and civil society continued to disintegrate. In August 1921, Mussolini forced his followers to accept a Pacification Pact that was to end violence against working-class and peasant organizations. The PSI, for its part, disbanded its own Arditi del Popolo, an armed anti-fascist movement and the only left-wing association that could have effectively challenged the physical violence of the squadristi (chapter 8). Increasingly, the fascists and their supporters sensed the possibility of seizing power. The fasci di combattimento were transformed into a formal political party (PNF) in November 1921 during a national congress in Rome. Tensions still existed between Mussolini’s desire to create a centralized party with power in his hands alone and the local squadristi, who were more revolutionary and intransigent. During 1922, Mussolini organized a series of demonstrations culminating with a mass rally in Naples at which he made ominous threats of a March on Rome. An early anti-fascist opposition group, the Alleanza del Lavoro, composed of socialists, republicans, trade unionists, communists, and anarchists was hampered by poor organization and the refusal of Catholics to participate. In the summer of 1922, squadristi besieged local centers of government and killed hundreds of adversaries. One of the most important squadristi and later one of the most influential of the fascist gerarchi, Italo Balbo, left a vivid diary of his participation in these actions (chapter 6). The more radical fascists, such as Balbo, were calling for a “March on Rome” and a revolutionary change of government. Their model was D’Annunzio’s seizure of Fiume. As the ragtag army of squadristi converged on Rome during the last week of October 1922, Mussolini was safely ensconced in Milan, conveniently close to the Swiss border should things go awry. Rome itself was never under any real military threat; General Emanuele Pugliese, the most highly decorated officer in World War I and an Italian Jew, informed King Vittorio Emanuele III that he needed only the king’s authorization to dispel the unruly crowds. The king, perhaps thinking the fascist threat useful and that Salandra would once again emerge as prime minister, refused to grant the general permission to defend Rome vigorously and instead sent a telegram inviting Mussolini to form a government. In truth,

there was no March on Rome; Mussolini and the fascist squadristi triumphantly entered the city on 28 October 1922 only after it had become clear that there would be no resistance. The March on Rome was less a military triumph and more a symbolic and psychological verdict on the political ineptness of the liberal state and the monarchy. In fascist ideology, though, the March on Rome immediately acquired mythological status, with Mussolini the prime mover of a heroic and glorious revolution. Once in power, Mussolini was careful to preserve the appearance of liberal government; his first cabinet included ministers from other political parties. Some were fooled, including Italy’s most prestigious intellectual, Benedetto Croce. Many, however, saw through the facade. Immediately, an anti-fascist opposition appeared. Anti-fascism was a broad and diffuse movement, from monarchists, Catholics, and liberals on the right to anarchists, socialists, and communists on the left. There was a “passive” resistance or “inner emigration” characterized more by a state of mind than outright opposition (as in the case of Croce) and a more radical, outspoken resistance that moved to sporadic action. Two early leaders of the anti-fascist opposition were Don Luigi Sturzo and Piero Gobetti. Sturzo had founded the PPI in 1919 and criticized those elements in the party and the Vatican that were philofascist; for his stance, he was ousted as party secretary but remained the most authoritative voice in the Catholic anti-fascist camp. His essay “Morality and Politics” was a work that spelled out the incompatibility of fascism and Christianity. Gobetti was a young Turinese intellectual who lamented the fact that Italy had failed to experience the liberating effects of the political and religious revolutions of the modern age (chapter 9).With Gobetti and (after his forced resignation) Sturzo outside the sphere of party politics, Giovanni Amendola was fast emerging as the leader of the parliamentary opposition. Amendola (18821926) studied philosophy and was a journalist. As a young man he was a conservative and nationalist liberal, but his experience at the front in the war pushed his politics more to the left. In January 1922, he founded one of the first anti-fascist reviews, Il Mondo, and eventually established the Unione Democratica Nazionale. Because of his activities, including the publication of documents incriminating Mussolini in the political assassination of Giacomo Matteotti, he was beaten in 1925 and fled to France, where he died of his injuries. Matteotti was a reform socialist member of the Chamber of Deputies who revealed the widespread corruption and electoral fraud in the elections of 1924 (chapter 10). Those elections had taken place under the provisions of the “Acerbo Law” of 1923 that permitted the party that received the largest number of votes (provided that it was over 25 percent of the votes cast) to be granted two-thirds of the seats in Parliament. Clearly, the law circumvented the most basic premise of parliamentary government, and the opposition parties debated whether to participate in the elections; they did, but the voting was marred by violence and intimidation. Matteotti’s speech denouncing these “irregularities” resulted in his assassination on 10 June 1924. The resulting “Matteotti crisis” was fascism’s most precarious moment. In Parliament, 150 deputies from the Catholics on the right to Communists on the left formed the Aventine Secession, named after the protest of Gaius Gracchus in the ancient Roman Republic, and

withdraw from parliament, claiming to be the true representatives of Italy. Joining Amendola in the Aventine Secession were Filippo Turati, the “grand old man” of Italian socialism and leader of the PSI, and Antonio Gramsci of the PCI. The Aventine Secession was hampered by a fatal flaw: It insisted on a legalitarian opposition, pinning its hopes on the possibility that King Vittorio Emanuele III would ask for Mussolini’s resignation. That never happened. The PCI eventually withdrew from the Aventine Secession and returned to Parliament. Pope Pius XI inadvertently assisted fascism by preventing an alliance between the PPI and the PSI. For the summer, fall, and early winter of 1924-1925, it seemed as though fascism was on the brink of collapse. Yet Mussolini’s speech in the Chamber of Deputies on 3 January 1925 (chapter 11) dashed the hopes of any legal opposition and signaled the beginning of the true fascist dictatorship. The Aventine Secession eventually melted away, and the “Exceptional Decrees” passed by the regime in 1925-1926 effectively dismantled the liberal, parliamentary state in Italy. Almost immediately, an anti-fascist underground appeared. One of the first organizations was Italia Libera, and one of the first underground newspapers was Non Mollare! in Florence. Non Mollare! published several documents directly implicating Mussolini in Matteotti’s assassination, prompting the swift and brutal response of the squadristi; when several innocent men were killed because of the newspaper’s activities, the decision was made to suspend publication. Opponents of the regime were arrested (such as the communist leader Antonio Gramsci), forced into exile (such as Filippo Turati, Pietro Nenni, and the fuorusciti), murdered outright (such as Matteotti and the Rosselli brothers), or physically assaulted (such as Gobetti and Amendola). The fascist police revived an older form of repression with the practice of confino or domestic exile. Gramsci—notwithstanding his parliamentary immunity and ill health—was arrested in 1926 and sentenced to twenty years in prison, where he devoted his time to a rethinking of contemporary Marxism (chapter 29). After eleven years in fascist prisons, he died in 1937, depriving the PCI and Italy of one of its greatest minds. Originally used by the fascists to express contempt for the anti-fascist exiles, the term fuorusciti (literally, those who have gone outside, outlaws) came to encompass the entire spectrum of anti-fascism abroad. Paris was the capital of the fuorusciti, but there were other centers of activity in London and New York. A major flaw of the fuorusciti was their insistence on continuing the old political party divisions while in exile. This problem was fully evident in the most important anti-fascist organization abroad, the Concentrazione Antifascista (CA), established in April 1927 with headquarters in Paris. Led by the socialist Pietro Nenni, the Concentrazione Antifascista was composed of the revolutionary PSI and the reformist PSU (which merged in July 1930), the Partito Repubblicano Italiano (PRI), the Confederazione Generale di Lavoro (CGL), and Lega Internazionale dei Diritti dell’Uomo (LIDU, International League for the Rights of Man). The CA published a weekly newspaper, La Libertà, from May 1927 until May 1934 and managed to gather many of the fuorusciti into one organization. The PCI refused to join, and internal divisions were to cause the CA to dissolve in 1934; it was replaced by a Unity of Action Pact.5

The experience of confino would prove to be politically decisive for many anti-fascists and generated some important literature as well. Two excerpts from confino are present in this collection. Carlo Levi was sentenced to a remote mountain town near Matera; out of that experience came his masterpiece Cristo si è fermato a Eboli in which he warned of “l’eterno fascismo italiano” (chapter 12). Cesare Pavese’s experience of confino produced a very different type of book, Il carcere (chapter 28). Both Levi and Pavese belonged to a new political movement, Giustizia e Libertà, which was born in Paris in 1929. Giustizia e Libertà was inspired by Carlo Rosselli, who had managed a sensational escape from confino on the penal island of Lipari. While on Lipari, Rosselli clandestinely wrote his major theoretical work, Socialismo liberale, in which he argued that twentieth-century socialism was the logical heir to nineteenth-century liberalism. Attacked from both the left and the right, Rosselli insisted on a heretical “liberal socialism” and was acknowledged as the enfant terrible of Italian antifascism.6 Giustiza e Libertà attracted some of the most important anti-fascist intellectuals and was second in influence only to the PCI. Italian anarchism was led by the heroic figure of Errico Malatesta (chapter 13); the tragic figure of Camillo Berneri (1897-1937), assassinated by Stalin’s agents during the Spanish Civil War; and the romantic figure of Carlo Tresca (18791943), assassinated by still-unknown persons on New York City’s Fifth Avenue. Ignazio Silone, an important member of the PCI until he abandoned communism and active politics, attempted an analysis of fascism from his exile in Switzerland. For Silone, fascism was neither accidental (“fascism did not fall from the heavens”) nor the destiny of Italy (“fascism was not inevitable”). His novel, Fontamara (Bitter Spring), written in exile while Silone thought he was mortally ill with tuberculosis, was the most influential piece of anti-fascist literature, translated into a dozen languages and selling millions of copies (chapter 15). Giovanni Amendola, in an article in Il Mondo (12 May 1923), first referred to fascism as “totalitarian.” The term was soon picked up by others, including Piero Gobetti in La Rivoluzione Liberale, Don Luigi Sturzo, and the communist opposition.7 Mussolini was to appropriate the concept for his own official elaboration of fascism (chapter 14) that appeared in the 1932 edition of the Enciclopedia italiana: “for the fascist, everything is within the State, and nothing human or spiritual can exist, or even have any meaning, outside the State. In this sense, fascism is totalitarian.” Although the term has been criticized for its use and evolution during the Cold War to link Nazi Germany with Stalin’s Soviet Union, it still has an analytical usefulness. The Italian historian Alberto Asor Rosa has perceptively written that Italian fascism was an “imperfect totalitarianism” compared with its more ruthless and efficient Nazi counterpart. Some in the anti-fascist camp recognized that fascism was, paradoxically, both something deeply rooted in Italian society yet new to modern politics. Carlo Rosselli, echoing Piero Gobetti, referred to fascism as both a tremendous novità and “in a certain sense the autobiography of a nation that abandons the political struggle, that worships the cult of unanimity, that flees from heresy.”8 Less theoretically sophisticated yet powerful in their own way are the letters of women to Mussolini (chapter 16). From the simple peasant woman asking Mussolini’s wife, Rachele, for

material assistance in raising her children to the chastising tone of another, these letters are a valuable window onto the dictatorship. As a mass regime with a former newspaper editor as dictator, fascism was sensitive to what today would be called “public opinion.” Popular with both the regime and the masses were short, pithy aphorisms that Mussolini often employed on public occasions to impress on the Italians what fascism stood for (chapter 17). Few could remember extracts from the “Fascismo” essay in the 1932 Enciclopedia italiana, but everyone knew the regime’s motto, “Mussolini Is Always Right!” or its imperious “Believe! Obey! Fight!” The triumphal boasts and rhetoric of the regime were often deflated by the fuorusciti in exile, but Italians at home rarely heard their withering attacks. Gaetano Salvemini spent much of the ventennio in exile and in a constant state of combativeness, furiously turning out essays, manuscripts, and letters to the editor demonstrating the falsehoods of fascist propaganda (chapter 18). Notwithstanding the heroic efforts of the fuorusciti abroad and anti-fascists underground in Italy, fascism scored its political triumphs. A major victory was the February 1929 Lateran Accords. The regime presented the Lateran Accords as finally resolving the bitter dispute that had opened between the church and state with the unification of Italy in the nineteenth century and had continued for the next six decades. The Lateran Accords constituted three separate agreements: Italy recognized the political sovereignty of the Vatican; in return, the Vatican would finally recognize the “new” nation of Italy. Italy was to compensate the Vatican for land and buildings confiscated during the Risorgimento and unification process, and a new concordat would regulate relations between the church and the fascist state. Since an overwhelming majority of Italians considered themselves both Catholics and patriotic citizens, the rift between church and state was a flaw of unification. The Lateran Accords were immensely popular, and Mussolini’s prestige rose accordingly. A few dissenting voices—even among the fascists—were heard but quickly suppressed. Catholicism had been granted a privileged place in the life of the nation as the only organization outside fascism that was permitted to exist. Tension between fascism and the church was not fully resolved. Only two years later, the regime and the Vatican came into conflict over the role of Azione Cattolica Italiana (Catholic Action), which had been formed in the 1860s to defend the church in the newly unified country. As a lay organization, Catholic Action acted as a liaison between an increasingly secular civil society and the church hierarchy. In particular, the regime protested Catholic Action’s control and influence over the youth of Italy. Pope Pius XI responded with a withering attack in his 1931 papal encyclical Non abbiamo bisogno (We Have No Need) (chapter 19). The encyclical was pointedly written in Italian rather than the more traditional Latin, much like the later anti-Nazi encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (With Burning Care), which was written in German. As fascism moved into its second decade, it could rest assured that political power was firmly held by Mussolini. The regime’s critics were in prison, in confino, in exile, or dead. In celebration, the regime mounted a retrospective exhibit of the “fascist revolution” (chapter 30).9 In truth, the revolutionary nature of fascism was being questioned, especially by the earliest and most fanatical fascists. Culture during the fascist era was a mix of the revolutionary remnants of futurism and the more reactionary currents of classicism and

academic art. The field of culture also became a substitute battleground between fascism and anti-fascism. The spring of 1925 saw a “battle of manifestos” played out in the fascist and antifascist press (chapter 26). Giovanni Gentile, the foremost intellectual to lend support to fascism, published the Manifesto of fascist intellectuals in April; a spirited response organized and written by Benedetto Croce and signed by dozens of dissidents appeared on 1 May. The stage had been set: As the regime tried to capture culture for its “totalitarian” purposes, antifascists turned to European intellectuals for support. Gentile himself presided over the most prestigious cultural institutions of fascist Italy—as founder and president of the Istituto Nazionale di Cultura Fascista, general editor of the Enciclopedia italiana, editor of Nuova Antologia , and president of the Royal Academy of Italy. Recent research has called into question the regime’s total control over culture and cultural policy. Besides individual intellectuals who could be easily suppressed, Italian culture was diffused through other institutions such as the universities, Catholic organizations, independent academies, journals, and reviews. Although the regime was long identified by the officially sanctioned stile littorio, cultural policy was often haphazard and ambiguously defined. An important development was the romanità style, meant to convey the fact that contemporary fascist Italy was supposedly the direct heir to the ancient Romans. Accordingly, ancient Rome was an approved subject for literature, history, architecture, and cinema. In politics, the ideas of the Mediterranean Sea as mare nostrum and an African Empire were revived, as Italian soldiers were forced to march to the passo romano--supposedly an ancient Roman march but suspiciously similar to the goose step in Nazi Germany. A major step toward control of the cultural realm was the creation of the Ministry of Popular Culture, in some ways modeled on Joseph Goebbels’s Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment in Nazi Germany. Although officially constituted in May 1937, “Minculpop,” as the ministry was derisively called, had its roots in Mussolini’s earlier Press Office, later the Undersecre-tariat for Press and Propaganda. This office controlled not only the press but literature, art, theater, music, and tourism as well. Minculpop never succeeded in creating a new fascist culture and was only partially successful in forcing artists and others to conform. More successful in controlling leisure, directing mass culture, and the manufacturing of artificial consent was the regime’s Dopolavoro organization. By effectively taking control of leisure time with competitive sports, country outings, and the like, the regime brought individuals into its domain in a relatively benign manner. By assisting with installment buying, it was managing the new desires of a consumerist culture most attractively portrayed in mass advertisements and the new cinema. Sports, too, were increasing under the watchful eye of the regime. Casual sports were administered by the Dopolavoro, while the regime usurped the frenzy caused by widely popular bicycle racing and soccer for political ends. The 1934 and 1938 World Cups, held in Italy and France, respectively, were open exercises in political propaganda. The boxing champion Primo Carnera was also used this way. At the other end of the spectrum, intellectuals such as Giuseppe Bottai and Margherita Sarfatti argued for a reinvigoration of Italian culture. Bottai had supported futurism and founded the cultural review Critica fascista in 1923, giving voice to a technocratic version of fascism, and he was also minister of education from 1936 until 1943. Sarfatti (chapter 23) was an intellectual in her own

right and patroness of the arts. The regime profited from the advent of radio and cinema as forms of mass entertainment. Mussolini was a newspaper man and controlled the popular press in Italy, often examining articles himself before their publication. A news agency founded in 1853 on the Reuters model, the Agenzia Stefania, was taken over by the regime. As a politician, Mussolini preferred impassioned speeches from balconies and was slow to recognize the usefulness of the radio. It was Guglielmo Marconi himself who persuaded Mussolini of the potential political usefulness of the new invention; accordingly, the first radio network was established in 1924, but it was not until 1937 that a special section of the government was assigned to control and manipulate the radio. Censorship was difficult because individuals could listen to foreign broadcasts and Radio Vaticana. In fact, it may have been Carlo Rosselli’s radio broadcast from Barcelona (chapter 39), urging Italians to rise up in a revolutionary strike against both fascism and Nazism, that sealed his fate and convinced the fascist regime to have him assassinated. The radio became immensely popular during the Ethiopian War (1935-1936) when Roberto Forges Davanzati’s “Cronache del Regime” kept Italians informed about the “African adventure.” As with the radio, the regime was slow to recognize the potential of cinema as well. Although Mussolini had declared that “the cinema is the strongest weapon,” a propaganda studio was not set up until 1925. L‘Unione Cinematografica Educativa (LUCE) produced newsreels and documentaries that—according to a 1926 law—were shown in all public theaters before screenings of commercial films. The filmmaker Alessandro Blasetti helped to raise the status of cinema as an art form with his review Cirtematografo. Blasetti was known for his Sole of 1928 depicting the draining of the Pontine marshes near Rome—a major propaganda coup for the regime; as well as for his Vecchia Guardia of 1934, which depicted the veritable civil war between squadristi and their opponents just before the March on Rome. His 1860 portrayed Garibaldi as a charismatic precursor to fascism. It was not until September 1934 that an office for cinematography was created within the Ministry of Popular Culture. A year later, the Venice Film Festival began, still today one of the most prestigious film competitions. In 1936, the regime opened the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, and a year later (on 21 Apri1-traditionally celebrated as Rome’s “birthday”), Italy’s answer to Hollywood, Cinecittà, was founded. Although the regime produced overtly political films such as Carmine Gallone’s Scipione l’Africano in 1937, Augusto Genina’s Squadrone bianco and Mario Camerini’s Il grande appello (1936), most films produced during the ventennio were escapist fantasies and comedies aimed at the masses and symbolized by the “white-telephone” found in the leading lady’s boudoir, signifying a life of leisure and pleasure.10 Architecture proved to be an important field during the ventennio. Modernism and more traditional schools often fought for official status, and the regime alternated between an aspiration for innovation and a desire for tradition. Milan could boast of the extraordinary projects conceptualized (but rarely realized) by the futurist architects Antonio Sant‘Elia and Mario Chiattone, while Rome continued to nurture the baroque and neoclassicism. The movimento italiano d’architettura razionalista brought the rationalist and internationalist style to Italy. The most ambitious projects undertaken by the regime were the excavation of the Roman Forum and the paving of the Via Imperiali, which destroyed working-class Roman

neighborhoods, and the Esposizione Universale di Roma (EUR) directed by Marcello Piacentini in the monumental style that symbolized Mussolini’s grandiose idea of a “third Rome.” One of Europe’s most important architects, Pier Luigi Nervi (1891-1979), was active during the uentennio, but his style was very different from that preferred by the regime. In painting and sculpture, Italian artists managed to escape the totalitarian controls imposed on their counterparts in Nazi Germany, where Hitler ordered the mounting of a “Degenerate Art” exhibit in 1937. In 1925, the regime founded the Royal Academy of Art, which favored a neoclassical aesthetic. Futurism soon lost its privileged position, although futurist artists continued to create important works. Giorgio De Chirico pioneered an innovative “metaphysical” painting; together with Carlo Carrà and Giorgio Morandi, he painted mysterious still lifes and landscapes. Ottone Rosai represented the Strapaese movement that looked to the Italian countryside for inspiration. The Cremona Prize was established by Roberto Farinacci, a severe critic of modern art; in response, Giuseppe Bottai established the Bergamo Prize to recognize the avant-garde. Economically, social historians and economists agree that conditions worsened for most Italians during the ventennio. The Palazzo Chigi Pact (1923) and the Palazzo Vidoni Pact (1925) clearly put the interests of industrialists and large landowners before the working classes. A “Charter of Labor” was issued in April 1927 that was supposed to protect the working class; instead, it effectively ended any trade union movement in Italy. Although the regime organized some massive public works projects (the most famous being the draining of the Pontine marshes just outside Rome) and initiated some welfare programs, national programs such as the “Battaglia del Grano,” part of the regime’s goal of “autarchy” or economic independence, made life increasingly difficult for the ordinary citizen. The Bonifica Integrale focused on land reclamation and improving productivity until the worldwide depression forced it to curtail its activities. An obsessive desire to increase Italy’s population led to subsidies for large families. “War is to man as maternity is to women,” Mussolini thundered in his speeches. This, of course, did little to alleviate the chronic poverty of the working classes. The official economic policy of “corporativism” or the corporate state was defined by the regime as the solution to the perennial conflicts generated between labor and capital. In theory, workers and owners were to be fully integrated into an obligatory and hierarchical system that supposedly synthesized what were thought to be the best features of syndicalism and nationalism. In truth, the corporate state was an attempt to defuse the revolutionary potential of the working class and subject it to both the state and private capital. Under the direction of Alfredo Rocco and Giuseppe Bottai, the corporate state was supposed to offer a “third way” between socialism and capitalism but never managed to achieve its potential. Its most important institutional legacy was the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI), which survived well into the postwar period. The regime tried to gain complete control over the education of youth, but this often led to conflicts with the Catholic Church. The idealist philosopher Giovanni Gentile was named minister of education and was charged with reforming the schools system—what Mussolini

called “the most fascist reform.” Under Gentile, philosophy regained its preeminence along with Latin and history, to the detriment of the social and natural sciences, modern languages, and modern teaching methods. Universities evolved as a locus of opposition to fascism, although many professors supported the regime; when all faculty were required to swear an oath of loyalty to fascism in 1932, only eleven professors in all of Italy refused. The regime had more success with younger children, instituting the Opera Nazionale Balilla in 1926 for children six to eighteen and the Fascio Giovanile del Littorio for older students; those at university were recruited into the Gruppi Universitari Fascisti (GUF). Gentile soon left the ministry of education, and confusion often reigned there. In 1938, Giuseppe Bottai proposed the Carta della Scuola, which was supposed to be a major reform but which fizzled and was overwhelmed by other events. Italian women were organized into the Fasci Feminili, auxiliaries of the Partito Nazionale Fascista. Women during the fascist regime were often caught between contradictory models: Fascism itself contained mutually exclusive categories of women as revolutionaries and women as traditional keepers of home and hearth. In addition, the 1920s and 1930s saw the explosion of a consumerist culture and its attendant images in advertisements and the cinema A major cultural initiative of the regime was the Enciclopedia italiana, modeled on the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Conceived and financed by the wealthy industrialist Giovanni Treccani in 1925, the Enciclopedia italiana was edited by Giovanni Gentile, who insisted that contributors be selected on the basis of their expertise rather than their strict allegiance to fascism. Less successful was the Istituto Nazionale di Cultura Fascista. Several Italians won the Nobel Prize, including Guglielmo Marconi, Luigi Pirandello (both supporters of the regime), Salvatore Quasimodo, Grazia Deledda (chapter 31), and Enrico Fermi, contributing to the cultural prestige of the regime, even though these last winners were not fascists. In literature, a new experimentalism that had begun in the early years of the twentieth century managed to survive into the fascist period. In 1924, Eugeno Montale published Ossi di seppia, immediately recognized as a classic, but four years later Italo Svevo’s La coscienza di Zeno, influenced by Svevo’s intellectual relationship with James Joyce, fell into a void and was not recognized until much later. Luigi Pirandello wrote his most important works during the 1930s. Alberto Moravia published Gli indifferent in 1929 and in his Il confomista of 1951 perhaps more than any other writer plumbed the depths of a certain type of mentality that found its way to fascism. In 1930, Salvatore Quasimodo published Acqzte e terre. Other important writers include Elio Vittorini, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Giovanni Papini, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Massimo Bontempelli, and Aldo Palazzeschi. In the early 1940s, a new realism emerged that would flower in the immediate postwar period and generate the tremendous international success of “neorealism” in cinema. Neoclassic music continued to dominate Italian cultural life. The so-called generazione del 1880 was challenged in the 1930s by twelve-tone composers. The former strove to emulate Italian composers as Girolamo Frescobaldi, Antonio Vivaldi, and Arcangelo Corelli; the latter challenged listeners with contemporary theories of music and often generated considerable controversy. The operas of Giuseppe Verdi continued to be popular, as were the works of

Giacomo Puccini. Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) became one of the most important composers and achieved international success. The conductor Arturo Toscanini became synonymous with the highest standards of musical performance and a dedicated anti-fascist after receiving a beating when he refused to play the fascist anthem “Govinezza” at a concert in Milan’s La Scala Opera House. He eventually fled to New York City, where he directed the NBC Radio Orchestra for many years. The culture of anti-fascism was embodied in the figure of Benedetto Croce. The Neapolitan philosopher had acquired such international prestige by the 1920s that the regime dared not silence him. In his works of history and historiography, Croce served as a beacon for two generations under fascism. His excerpt here (chapter 27) was often openly read as an explicit condemnation of fascism. Mussolini and Hitler had exchanged visits in the mid-1930s, culminating in the declaration of the “Rome-Berlin Axis” in 1936. Support of Franco rebels during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) further drew the two countries together. The personal and ideological ties between the two dictators would eventually be politically and militarily consummated in May 1939 when the two countries signed the “Pact of Steel.” Although Mussolini sometimes presented himself on the world stage as a calming influence on his German “protégé,” it soon became apparent that fascist Italy was the junior partner in the relationship. The experience of the Ethiopian War in 1935-1936 and a closer alliance with Nazi Germany pushed the regime into a new racial consciousness (chapter 33). An “African Empire” was declared by Mussolini from the balcony of Palazzo Venezia in May 1936, and the regime created a new entity, Africa Orientale Italiana (AOI). Laws were passed prohibiting the “racial mixing” of Italian men and African women. Racists and anti-Semites such as Telesio Interlandi and Giovanni Preziosi were given greater voice. Yet Italians—Jew and Gentile alike —were shocked when the regime published its Manifesto degli scienziati razzisti in July 1938 (chapter 34). That shock was compounded with the onset of a different kind of antiSemitism that culminated in the Holocaust in Italy. Until 8 September 1943, Italian Jews were relatively safe; with the Nazi occupation of the country, their fate would be only a little better than that of their European counterparts. Primo Levi (chapter 37) and Giuliana Tedeschi (chapter 38) recount their experiences in the death camps. Over 85 percent of Italian Jews survived the Holocaust, a survival rate second only to Denmark. Controversy still swirls over the role of Pope Pius XII: Did he save Jews by granting refuge in monasteries, convents, and churches, or was he negligent in not speaking and acting against Nazism and fascism?11 Fascist Italy’s intervention, along with Nazi Germany, in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) provided anti-fascists with their first opportunity to fight fascism with force. If the Ethiopian War was the high point of popular support, that support began to dissipate during the Spanish Civil War. Mussolini ordered that Italian anti-fascists who were caught were to be executed. At the battle of Guadalajara in March 1937, Mussolini’s Corpo di Truppe Volontarie (who were not volunteers but mostly veterans of the Ethiopian War) were defeated by an Italian antifascist force. The battle of Guadalajara was fascism’s most humiliating international defeat before World War II.

The Second World War was almost an unmitigated disaster for Italy’s armed forces. Not even Field Marshal Irwin Rommel’s comment that “The German soldier has astounded the world; the bersaglieri [Italian sharpshooters] have astounded the German soldier” could soften the blow to the regime’s prestige. After restraining himself in September 1939, when Nazi Germany attacked Poland, Mussolini declared war on France on 10 June 1940 when that country’s imminent fall was apparent. In October, Italy invaded Greece as part of Mussolini’s plan to control the Mediterranean Sea. The navy, the least fascist of the armed forces, fared better but still suffered heavy losses. Perhaps most tragic was the Russian Expeditionary Force that Mussolini insisted on sending along with Hitler’s invading armies; it completely perished on the Russian front. Anti-fascists, led by the communists, successfully organized mass strikes in March 1943 protesting fascist Italy’s continuing participation in a losing war and the dire economic and social conditions on the home front. In the summer of 1943, Rome was bombed by the Allies, who also began an invasion of Sicily. Mussolini was deposed on 25 July 1943, but confusion reigned. Marshal Pietro Badoglio was named prime minister, yet his radio announcement that “the war continues” was more confusing than inspiring. The con-finati were released and the fuorusciti returned from exile, sparking the armed Resistance.12 On 8 September 1943, Italy signed an armistice with the Allies, and the next day the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (CNL) was formed. The CNL was composed of five political parties: the Liberals (PLI), the Christian Democrats (DC), the Socialists (PSI), the Communists (PCI), and the Actionists (Pd’A). Tensions eventually developed between the CLN and the Allied Military Government over the CLN’s role in postwar Italy. Mussolini was rescued by the Nazis and installed in a puppet regime, the Republic of Salò. When Salò issued a decree calling for all able-bodied men to join its army, many fled instead into the hills, countryside, and mountains and joined the Resistance. The PCI was the largest and most influential of the anti-fascist movements, followed by the Pd’A, a movement founded on the legacy of Carlo Rosselli’s Giustiza e Libertà organization. Along with Tedeschi, Renata Viganò (chapter 40) and Ada Gobetti (chapter 53) here represent the important contributions made by Italian women to the armed Resistance. Antonio Fossati (chapter 49) and Arrigo Paladini (chapter 50) offer testimonies to the often-ultimate sacrifice demanded in the struggle for justice and liberty. Robert Katz details the horrors of the Ardeatine Caves massacre just outside Rome (chapter 52), and Alcide Cervi (chapter 58) simply but eloquently recounts the massacre of his seven sons. Some Italians rallied to the Republic of Salò, and their activities remain controversial to this day: Were they defending the honor of Italy from an invading foe (the Allies), or were they fanatical fascists determined to fight until the end? Prince Junio Valerio Borghese, from a noble Roman family, was symbolic of this latter choice. He commanded the notorious Decima Mas (a torpedo boat squadron) and carried out barbaric reprisals against the anti-fascist partisans. Sentenced to twelve years in prison after the war for his atrocities, Borghese was instead immediately released and became a prominent neofascist politician. In 1971, when his role in a murky right-wing coup d’état was revealed, he fled to Spain.13 His funeral in Rome three

years later was the occasion for a major neofascist demonstration. Borghese’s story is recounted here as an indication of how fascism survived the immediate postwar period and became something of a force in Italian politics, even to this day. Others who were responsible for anti-fascist reprisals were the ironically named Mario Carità, who organized the infamous Carità Band and worked with the SS and the Gestapo in Florence; Pietro Koch, who committed atrocities in Rome; and Pietro Caruso, involved in the notorious Ardeatine Caves massacre. Although a High Commission for the Expurgation of Fascism was established after the war, it failed to achieve its goals and was hampered by political conservatives in Italy. The CNL and the Allies worked together (not without problems), and the war eventually came to an end. On 25 April 1945, Milan revolted, expelled the fascists and Nazis, and the war soon ended. Today 25 April is celebrated in Italy as a national holiday. Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were captured by partisans on 27 April as they were trying to reach Switzerland and were executed the next day. Their battered bodies were hung upside down from a gas station in Milan’s Piazza Loreto, where anti-fascist partisans had recently been executed. Ferruccio Parri of the Partito d’Azione was Italy’s first postwar prime minister (19 June to 24 November 1945). Parri had been active in the anti-fascist underground since the 1920s but was not able to manage the postwar peace. When the Liberals and Christian Democrats refused to follow his reform program, his government collapsed, initiating a four-decade-long monopoly of power by the Christian Democrats. On 2 June 1946, the Italian people voted 54 percent to 46 percent to abolish the monarchy and create an Italian republic. A new constitution, crafted by a constituent assembly, went into effect on the first day of 1948. After the war, fascism and anti-fascism continued to play important roles in Italian politics, culture, and society. The Action Party dissolved, and the PCI became the largest communist party in western Europe. Fascism, although outlawed, survived in the uomo qualunque movement and the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI); it survives today in the guise of “postfascism” in the Alleanza Nazionale. Anti-fascism became—at least in official rhetoric and enshrined in the constitution—the foundation of the Italian Republic. Some have criticized the “myth” of anti-fascism, and the waning years of the twentieth century witnessed a sustained historiographical and political attack on the ideals of the Resistance (chapter 54). Today, the denigration of the Resistance comes not only from fascist, neofascist, or postfascist politicians and intellectuals. The government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has decreed that the nation’s history textbooks should be rewritten because they glorify the anti-fascists. In an interview in May 2003, Berlusconi solemnly intoned that only he “could save the country from communism.” 14 It was not that long ago when another Italian thundered that only he could save Italy from the perils of communism and “make the trains run on time.” By then (1922), the threat of a communist revolution in Italy had already dissipated. Similarly, today there is no threat to the Italian Republic from communists, and it is arguable that such a threat never really existed, even at the peak of the Italian Communist Party’s popularity. Under siege by what he perceives to be a politically motivated judiciary looking into allegations of

his corrupt business practices, Berlusconi has resurrected the specter of communism for reasons of personal political expedience. In doing so, he has also raised the specter of another ghost, that of fascism. In a September 2003 interview, Berlusconi insisted that “Mussolini never killed anyone.... Mussolini sent people on holiday to domestic exile.”15 There can only be two possibilities regarding Berlusconi’s public remarks that only he can “save Italy from the perils of communism”: Either he is deaf to the irony of his own rhetoric, or his hearing is pitch-perfect and his comments are really a not-so-subtle reference to his own brand of “benign” fascism. While the current center-right government and academics of various political stripes denigrate the Resistance, a mysterious transformation (some might say a miracle) occurred in Rome. Over the entrance to the EUR Administration building, designed by Gaetano Minucci, a bas-relief by Publio Morbiducci depicts the history of Rome. The facade, originally constructed during the fascist era, included an imperious Mussolini astride an impressive steed hailed by men, women, and children. With the fall of the fascist regime in July 1943, the basrelief was attacked and the face of Mussolini chipped off. Recently, the face has been restored and the facade cleaned. (See illustration on page 292.) Notwithstanding the continuous assault—politically, culturally, intellectually—against antifascism, many Italians still defend the Resistance as a viable foundation for the Italian Republic. While recognizing its flaws and admitting its defects, one can still see it as a shining moment, an instance of hope, a possibility for renewal, and perhaps most tragically, a road not taken.

NOTES 1 Domenico Settembrini, “The Divided Left: After Fascism, What?” in Italian Socialism: Between Politics and History, ed. Spencer Di Scala (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), 110. 2 Quoted in Giorgio Bocca, Storia dell’Italia partigiana (Milan: Mondadori, 1995), 416. 3 Ada Gobetti, Diario partigiano (Turin: Einaudi, 1956), 414. 4 Ferruccio Parri, Scritti 1915-1975 (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1976), 179. 5 Alexander De Grand, The Italian Left in the Twentieth Century (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 68-70. 6 On the charismatic Rosselli, see Stanislao G. Pugliese, Carlo Rosselli: Socialist Heretic and Antifascist Exile (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999). 7 For an outstanding analysis of the term, see Abbott Gleason, Totalitarianism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). 8 Carlo Rosselli, Socialismo liberale (Turin: Einaudi, 1997), 117.

9 Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution: 1st decennial of the March on Rome; this is the English translation of Mostra della rivoluzione fascista (Rome: National Fascist Party, 1933). See also the recent work by Jeffrey T. Schnapp, Anno X. Mostra della rivoluzione fascista, 1932 (Rome: Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali, 2003). 10 See especially Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). 11 On this controversial subject, see Susan Zuccotti, The Italians and the Holocaust (New York: Basic Books, 1987), and her most recent work, Under His Vary Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002); and Nicola Caracciolo, Uncertaira Refuge: Italy and the Jews during the Holocaust, trans. Florette Rechnitz Koffler and Richard Koffler (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995). More polemical is Daniel Jonah Goldenhagen’s A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair (New York: Random House, 2002). 12 For an excellent anthology of writings in Italian on the armed Resistance, see Philip Cooke, ed., The Italian Resistance: An Anthology (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1997). 13 On the persistence of fascist and neofascist threats to the Italian Republic, see Franco Ferraresi’s Threats to Democracy: The Radical Right in Italy after the War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996). 14 Frank Bruni, “Berlusconi, in a Rough Week, Says Only He Can Save Italy,” New York Times, 10 May 2003, p. A1. 15 “Forza Berlusconi!” Interview with Boris Johnson and Nicholas Farrell, The Spectator, 6 September 2003; Nicholas Farrell, “Diary,” The Spectator, 13 September 2003.

I THE ROOTS OF FASCISM

1 The Futurist Manifesto Filippo Tommaso Marinetti Futurism was one of the first avant-garde movements of the twentieth century. It sprang from the febrile mind of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who published the “Futurist Manifesto” in the Paris daily, Le Figaro, on 20 February 1909. Futurism glorified action, technology, and war, shocking contemporary bourgeois society. The futurists insisted on “burning down the libraries and flooding the museums” in order to free modern artists from the oppressive and dead weight of past aesthetic tradition. In the early 1920s, futurism and fascism seemed a natural alliance; but as the regime became entrenched in power, it shed its revolutionary image and, accordingly, its association with futurism. Although Marinetti was inducted into the Fascist Italian Academy, fascist aesthetic policy became increasingly conservative, and its ties with futurism were eventually severed. World War I defused much of the revolutionary impetus of futurism even as it brought futurist aesthetics into the larger European society. We have been up all night, my friends and I, beneath mosque lamps whose brass cupolas are bright as our souls, because like them they were illuminated by the internal glow of electric hearts. And trampling underfoot our native sloth on opulent Persian carpets, we have been discussing right up to the limits of logic and scrawling the paper with demented writing. Our hearts were filled with an immense pride at feeling ourselves standing quite alone, like lighthouses or like the sentinels in an outpost, facing the army of enemy stars encamped in their celestial bivouacs. Alone with the engineers in the infernal stokeholes of great ships, alone with the black spirits which rage in the belly of rogue locomotives, alone with the drunkards beating their wings against the walls. Then we were suddenly distracted by the rumbling of huge double decker trams that went leaping by, streaked with light like the villages celebrating their festivals, which the Po in flood suddenly knocks down and uproots, and, in the rapids and eddies of a deluge, drags

down to the sea. Then the silence increased. As we listened to the last faint prayer of the old canal and the crumbling of the bones of the moribund palaces with their green growth of beard, suddenly the hungry automobiles roared beneath our windows. “Come, my friends!” I said. “Let us go! At last Mythology and the mystic cult of the ideal have been left behind. We are going to be present at the birth of the centaur and we shall soon see the first angels fly! We must break down the gates of life to test the bolts and the padlocks! Let us go! Here is they very first sunrise on earth! Nothing equals the splendor of its red sword which strikes for the first time in our millennial darkness.” We went up to the three snorting machines to caress their breasts. I lay along mine like a corpse on its bier, but I suddenly revived again beneath the steering wheel—a guillotine knife —which threatened my stomach. A great sweep of madness brought us sharply back to ourselves and drove us through the streets, steep and deep, like dried up torrents. Here and there unhappy lamps in the windows taught us to despise our mathematical eyes. “Smell,” I exclaimed, “smell is good enough for wild beasts!” And we hunted, like young lions, death with its black fur dappled with pale crosses, who ran before us in the vast violet sky, palpable and living. And yet we had no ideal Mistress stretching her form up to the clouds, nor yet a cruel Queen to whom to offer our corpses twisted into the shape of Byzantine rings! No reason to die unless it is the desire to be rid of the too great weight of our courage! We drove on, crushing beneath our burning wheels, like shirt-collars under the iron, the watch dogs on the steps of the houses. Death, tamed, went in front of me at each corner offering me his hand nicely, and sometimes lay on the ground with a noise of creaking jaws giving me velvet glances from the bottom of puddles. “Let us leave good sense behind like a hideous husk and let us hurl ourselves, like fruit spiced with pride, into the immense mouth and breast of the world! Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich the unfathomable reservoirs of the Absurd!” As soon as I had said these words, I turned sharply back on my tracks with the mad intoxication of puppies biting their tails, and suddenly there were two cyclists disapproving of me and tottering in front of me like two persuasive but contradictory reasons. Their stupid swaying got in my way. What a bore! Pouah! I stopped short, and in disgust hurled myself— vlan!—head over heels in a ditch. Oh, maternal ditch, half full of muddy water! A factory gutter! I savored a mouthful of strengthening muck which recalled the black teat of my Sudanese nurse! As I raised my body, mud-spattered and smelly, I felt the red hot poker of joy deliciously pierce my heart. A crowd of fishermen and gouty naturalists crowded terrified around this marvel. With patient and tentative care they raised high enormous grappling irons to fish up my

car, like a vast shark that had run aground. It rose slowly leaving in the ditch, like scales, its heavy coachwork of good sense and its upholstery of comfort. We thought it was dead, my good shark, but I woke it with a single caress of its powerful back, and it was revived running as fast as it could on its fins. Then with my face covered in good factory mud, covered with metal scratches, useless sweat and celestial grime, amidst the complaint of staid fishermen and angry naturalists, we dictated our first will and testament to all the living men on earth.

MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM 1. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness. 2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt. 3. Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist. 4. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace. 5. We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit. 6. The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements. 7. Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man. 8. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed. 9. We want to glorify war—the only cure for the world—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman. 10. We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice. 11. We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of

enthusiastic crowds. It is in Italy that we are issuing this manifesto of ruinous and incendiary violence, by which we today are founding Futurism, because we want to deliver Italy from its gangrene of professors, archaeologists, tourist guides and antiquaries. Italy has been too long the great second-hand market. We want to get rid of the innumerable museums which cover it with innumerable cemeteries. Museums, cemeteries! Truly identical in their sinister juxtaposition of bodies that do not know each other. Public dormitories where you sleep side by side forever with beings you hate or do not know. Reciprocal ferocity of the painters and sculptors who murder each other in the same museum with blows of line and color. To make a visit once a year, as one goes to see the graves of our dead once a year, that we could allow! We can even imagine placing flowers once a year at the feet of the Gioconda! But to take our sadness, our fragile courage and our anxiety to the museum every day, that we cannot admit! Do you want to poison yourselves? Do you want to rot? What can you find in an old picture except the painful contortions of the artist trying to break uncrossable barriers which obstruct the full expression of his dream? To admire an old picture is to pour our sensibility into a funeral urn instead of casting it forward with violent spurts of creation and action. Do you want to waste the best part of your strength in a useless admiration of the past, from which you will emerge exhausted, diminished, trampled on? Indeed daily visits to museums, libraries and academies (those cemeteries of wasted effort, calvaries of crucified dreams, registers of false starts!) is for artists what prolonged supervision by the parents is for intelligent young men, drunk with their own talent and ambition. For the dying, for invalids and for prisoners it may be all right. It is, perhaps, some sort of balm for their wounds, the admirable past, at a moment when the future is denied them. But we will have none of it, we, the young, strong and living Futurists! Let the good incendiaries with charred fingers come! Here they are! Heap up the fire to the shelves of the libraries! Divert the canals to flood the cellars of the museums! Let the glorious canvases swim ashore! Take the picks and hammers! Undermine the foundation of venerable towns! The oldest among us are not yet thirty years old: we have therefore at least ten years to accomplish our task. When we are forty let younger and stronger men than we throw us in the waste paper basket like useless manuscripts! They will come against us from afar, leaping on the light cadence of their first poems, clutching the air with their predatory fingers and sniffing at the gates of the academies the good scent of our decaying spirits, already promised to the catacombs of the libraries.

But we shall not be there. They will find us at last one winter’s night in the depths of the country in a sad hangar echoing with the notes of the monotonous rain, crouched near our trembling aeroplanes, warming our hands at the wretched fire which our books of today will make when they flame gaily beneath the glittering flight of their pictures. They will crowd around us, panting with anguish and disappointment, and exasperated by our proud indefatigable courage, will hurl themselves forward to kill us, with all the more hatred as their hearts will be drunk with love and admiration for us. And strong healthy Injustice will shine radiantly from their eyes. For art can only be violence, cruelty, injustice. The oldest among us are not yet thirty, and yet we have already wasted treasures, treasures of strength, love, courage and keen will, hastily, deliriously, without thinking, with all our might, till we are out of breath. Look at us! We are not out of breath, our hearts are not in the least tired. For they are nourished by fire, hatred and speed! Does this surprise you? It is because you do not even remember being alive! Standing on the world’s summit, we launch once more our challenge to the stars! Your objections? All right! I know them! Of course! We know just what our beautiful false intelligence affirms: “We are only the sum and the prolongation of our ancestors,” it says. Perhaps! All right! What does it matter? But we will not listen! Take care not to repeat those infamous words! Instead, lift up your head! Standing on the world’s summit we launch once again our insolent challenge to the stars! ... Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Le Figaro (Paris), 20 February 1909; available at cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/T4PM/futurist-manifesto.html and other sites.

2 An Excerpt from Four and Twenty Mind s Giovanni Papini The last years of the nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth witnessed an increased consciousness of the irrational side of human nature. Scientists, writers, artists, and philosophers turned to the irrational to express certain ideas. In some ways, this irrationalism was a deformed legacy of nineteenth-century romanticism. Here was the cult of genius—the idea of the artist as the highest order of human being, of artistic creation on the order of deific enterprise. The irrationalists, like the futurists, scorned the ordinary, the mundane, the quotidian. Lacerba was an avant-garde literary journal in Florence that cultivated futurism and published futurist writers. Giovanni Papini (1881-1956) and Ardengo Soffici (1879-1964) were, along with Giuseppe Prezzolini (1882-1983), the major exponents of this irrationalist trend in Italy. Many of the tendencies found here would later appear in political and aesthetic form under fascism. Here Papini refers to himself in the third person and paints a monstrous, grotesque, yet heroic image. Giovanni Papini does not need to be introduced to our readers. Everyone knows, his friends with even more certainty than his enemies, that he is the ugliest man in Italy (if indeed he deserves the name of man at all), so repulsive that Mirabeau would seem in comparison an academy model, a Discobolus, an Apollo Belvedere. And since the face is the mirror of the soul, as the infinite wisdom of the race informs us in one of its proverbial condensations of experience, no one will be surprised to learn that this Papini is the scoundrel of literature, the blackguard of journalism, the Barabbas of art, the thug of philosophy, the bully of politics, the Apaché of culture, and that he is inextricably involved in all the enterprises of the intellectual underworld. It is also well known that he lives sumptuously and gorgeously, and of course like a Sybarite, in an inaccessible castle; and that he derives his usual means of sustenance from theft, blackmail, and highway robbery. We may add, though it is scarcely necessary, that his favorite food is the flesh of fools and his favorite drink is warm, steaming human blood. It is a matter of common knowledge that this creature is the worst of all the churls and boors that feed on Italian soil: rumor has it that he has sworn a Carthaginian hatred against every past

or future treatise on good behavior. This shameful rascal goes even so far as to say what he actually thinks. Worse still, he has the audacity to turn on the critics when they annoy him: Cet animal est très méchant: Quand on l’attaque il se défend! This Giovanni Papini, this sinister chameleon of the zoology of the spirit, has just published a new book, a thick book, an abominable book. If our eyes were not veiled by that natural kindliness which always dominates a well-bred soul, and if our severest words were not shut deep down in our throat and our ink-well by the practical necessity of defending a colleague, we should be tempted to say that not even in the most decadent and vituperative periods of our literature has any one ever applied such a boundless flow of ribald and perfidious terms to men who in spite of their moments of weakness (due, no doubt, to the influence of Homer’s nods), honor the name and genius of Italy among ourselves and before the world. Disgust assails us, nausea overwhelms us, scorn conquers us, indignation stifles us, wrath shakes us, and rage consumes us when we see this miscreant of the pen, this bandit of paper, this outlaw of ink, move to the assault of persons whom the country honors, universities approve, academies reward, foreigners admire, and the bourgeoisie respects without knowing why. Who can witness such an atrocious spectacle without shuddering? Who can be content to stand aside with folded arms? Never shall it be said that filibusters and libelers may devastate with impunity the hortos conclusos, the gardens of Armida, the ivory towers and the terrestrial paradises of our literature. Our voice is weak, and modest is our strength. But we rise to protest (with dignity, with nobility, but with energy) against this shameful degeneration of criticism. The volume in question, which the author shamelessly entitles Slashings, opens appropriately with several pages of “Boasts,” in which Papini insinuates that indignation as well as love may lead to knowledge, since only our enemies clearly perceive our defects and our failings. But this Tamerlane of literary warfare does not keep to the promise of his title. Of his twenty-four chapters, in fact, there are only eleven that can fairly be called “slashings.” The other thirteen are either eulogies of men alive or dead, or cordial presentations of men famous or unknown. And this again is scandalous, and sheds the clearest electric light on the fundamental dishonesty of Papini. Any one who has been so unfortunate as to spend five lire in the hope of witnessing a massacre (and in view of the common human instincts one cannot deny a priori that such a purchase is possible) would be justified in suing the slasher for an attempt to collect money under false pretenses. For this wretched book contains pages so steeped in affection and so warm with love—and this not only in the chapters in which he is talking of his friends—that it is hard to believe them written by the same murderous hand that wrote the other pages. If the men praised were acquaintances of Papini, the phenomenon might easily be explained as a case of bribery or blackmail. But in almost all these instances the men are dead, and in many cases they have been dead so long that Papini cannot possibly have known them.

We confess that we are powerless to solve this enigma, and we console ourselves with the thought—an ancient and excellent idea—that the soul of man is an abyss where lights and shadows mingle in conflict, to the confusion of the psychologists. But we must not let this impudent Proteus deceive us. We must not forget that he spends more than fifty pages in an onslaught on that Benedetto Croce, whom the young men of forty-five and fifty years regard as their standard and their lighthouse, that Croce whom all revere—from the Giornale d‘Italia to the Senate, from Pescasseroli to Texas—as the ultimate intuition and expression of the truth. We must not forget that this Zoilus in the form of Thersites allows himself to attack Gabriele D’Annunzio, our great national poet, novelist, dramatist, and orator, our champion intellectual importer, who, like Ferrero, his only rival in this respect, lives on the results of a most profitable exportation. In this same book he maltreats that Luciano Zuccoli whom all Italian ladies adore; that Sem Benelli whom all Italian second galleries have applauded; that Guido Mazzoni, permanent secretary of the Academy of the Crusca, whose Bunch of Keys has admitted him into the Golden Book of Poetry; that Emilio Cecchi who will long remain the dearest hope of young Italian criticism; that Romain Rolland who has undertaken to write a twenty-volume novel, and will sooner or later be declared an honorary citizen of Switzerland. The devouring hunger of this hyena is so boundless that he has even attacked unreal beings, imagined by the fancy of peoples and of poets. Incredible though it may seem, there are pages here in which, with an unprecedented refinement of malignity, he tears to bits the learned Dr. Faust and the melancholy Prince Hamlet. The case is all the clearer since the men whom he praises are themselves calumniators: Swift, who calumniated man; Weininger, who calumniated woman; Cervantes, who mocked idealism; Remy de Gourmont, who performed the autopsy on Philistine thought; Tristan Corbière, who ridiculed the whole of humanity, including himself. Giovanni Papini knows only hatred. His one motive is wrath. He deals only in invective; he delights only in blasphemy. He has gathered the filth of Aretino, the drivel of Annibal Caro, the sinister humor of Antonfrancesco Doni, has beaten up this mess of infection with the whip of Baretti, and then tries to make us swallow it. But we writhe in revolt against the drink, for we, like the child of Tasso, desire a sweet draught, especially now that all these troubles are plunging the world into the darkness of grief. It is perfectly right that boneheads should be given a drubbing, that undeserved reputations should be reduced to their true level, that the mediocre should be exposed, that bubbles should be pricked, and so on. That is all right. But this is not the way it should be done. “And the way offends me still,” as the Divine Poet makes Signora Francesca da Rimini remark. The author of this detestable book is still young, and has given evidence of ability to do things not so bad as this. We will remind him, therefore, of a great truth which our fathers have handed down to us, and which we shall entrust as a precious thing to our sons: “Criticism is easy, but art is difficult.” And if this stubborn wretch should reply that even criticism may be art, and should persist in his wickedness, we shall retort with a saying of the immortal Manzoni, a saying that is somewhat out of date, but still convenient: “Don’t worry, poor creature, it will take more than you to turn Milan upside down.”

Giovanni Papini, Four and Twenty Minds, trans. Ernest Hatch Wilkins (New York: Crowell, 1922), 318-24.

3 The Vigil Gabriele D‘Annunzio Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863-1938) was one of the greatest European writers. In 1881, he made his way to Rome, where he became a sensation in the world of belles lettres. With a highly refined style, he embodied a decadent literature and life. His amorous adventures (including one with the actress Eleonora Duse) were the talk of Europe, oftentimes overshadowing his writing, which unabashedly gloried in a decadent sensualism, a heady eroticism, and a self-conscious hedonism. D‘Annunzio was influenced by Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch (or “superman”), a fact that was later to have political implications. His extravagant lifestyle of conspicuous consumption forced him to flee his creditors to France in 1910; in 1915, he was a vociferous exponent of Italy’s entrance into the war. After the war, he led a band of mercenaries to the disputed port city of Fiume and “captured” it for Italy. The “Fiume adventure” and style—complete with special uniforms, public rituals, symbols of death, battle songs, ornate choreography, and impassioned speeches from balconies by the supreme leader D’Annunzio—was soon incorporated by Mussolini into fascism. As one of the few who could compete with Mussolini in terms of prestige and charisma, Mussolini granted him the title of Prince of Montenevoso in 1924 with the understanding that D‘Annunzio would retire from politics. D’Annunzio was, for a short time, president of the Royal Academy before his death in 1938. In the room now drops of wax were falling from the tapers. Between the slats of the closed shutters entered stronger gusts of wind which made the curtains rear up. Slowly pervaded with drowsiness, Rosa’s eyelids lowered now and then; but whenever her head fell upon her chest, she would open her eyes with a start.

“Are you tired?” the cleric asked in a gentle voice. “Not me,” the woman answered, rallying her energies and straightening up on her hips. But in the silence here senses were again overcome by drowsiness. Her head rested against the wall; now her hair covered her whole neck; through her parted lips came slow, regular breathing. She was very beautiful like that; and nothing in her was more voluptuous than the rise and fall of her breasts and the shape of her knees discernible beneath the thin cloth of her skirt. A sharp gust drew a moan from the curtains and extinguished the two tapers closest to the window. And what if I kissed her? thought Emidio, prompted by a sudden fleshly urge as he gazed at the dozing woman. The singing voices again cascaded through the June night with the solemnity of liturgical cadences; and from different points, always farther removed, rose the answers in varying tones, unaccompanied by instruments. The full moon must have been high in the sky because the dim light inside did not subdue the cool white light which poured copiously over the shutters and seeped through the slats. Emidio turned to face the death bed. His eyes gliding over the rigid black outline of the corpse involuntarily halted at the hand, a swollen, yellowish hand, with nails that looked somewhat like claws, its back crossed by livid webs; and his eyes quickly shrank away from this sight. Little by little, in the unconsciousness of sleep, Rosa’s head, almost tracing a semicircle on the wall, bent towards the perturbed cleric. The slow reclining of that beautiful feminine head inspired a melting tenderness; and, since the movement somewhat altered the woman’s sleep, between her ever so slightly parted lids the rims of the iris appeared and immediately disappeared in the white cornea, like the petal of a violet floating in milk. Emidio remained immobile, letting her weight rest against his shoulder. He held his breath for fear of waking the woman from her sleep, and a tremendous anguish was cast upon him by the throbbing of his heart, his wrists, his temples, which seemed to echo through the entire room. But, since Rosa went on sleeping, little by little he felt drained and drifted into an invincible listlessness, looking at that feminine throat marked with voluptuousness by Venus’ necklaces, breathing in her warm breath and the smell of her hair. A fresh breeze laden with nocturnal fragrance bent the flickering flame and blew it out. Then, no longer thinking, no longer timorous, yielding fully to temptation, the keeper of the funeral vigil kissed the woman full on the mouth. At that contact she awoke with a start, fixed her wide, astonished eyes on her brother-inlaw’s face and went very pale. Then she slowly gathered together the hair on her neck; and then just sat there, holding herself erect, tensely guarded, staring straight in front of her at the shifting shadow. “Who put out the tapers?” “The wind.”

Nothing else was said. They both remained on the wedding chest as before, sitting side by side, grazing each other with their elbow, in a painful uncertainty, by a mental artifice not letting their conscience judge the event and condemn it. Spontaneously, they both turned their attention to external things, injecting into this act a fictitious intensity, even helping it along by the position of their bodies. Gradually a kind of intoxication was taking possession of them. The singing voices in the night continued, lingered in the air, and from call to call grew alluringly softer. The male and female voices wove an amorous composition. At times one single voice emerged sharp and high above all the others, striking a single note around which the harmonies swelled like waves drawn to the central current of a river. Now, at intervals, at the beginning of each stanza, rose the metallic vibration of a guitar tuned in diapente, and between one round and the next came the measured thuds of the threshing flails against the ground. Both listened. Perhaps because of a change in the wind, the smells were no longer the same as before. From Orlando hill, most likely, came the powerful perfume of orange and lemon groves; from the Scalia gardens, perhaps, came the perfume of roses, so thick that the air had the flavor of wedding candies; and perhaps from the swamps of Farina the damp fragrance of irises which, once inhaled, was as delightfully refreshing as a draft of cold water. They still kept silent, sitting motionless on the chest, oppressed by the voluptuousness of the moonlit night. In front of them the last flame flickered rapidly and, bending, made tears of wax fall from the almost consumed taper. Again and again it seemed about to die. They did not move. Tense and hesitant, their eyes fixed and dilated, they watched the tremulous, moribund flame. Suddenly the inebriating wind blew it out. Then, unafraid of the darkness, with the very same avidity, at the very same instant, the man and the woman drew close, clutched, searched for the other’s mouth, lost, blindly, without speaking, smothering each other with caresses. Gabriele D’Annunzio, “The Vigil,” in Nocturne and Five Tales of Love and Death, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (Malboro, Vt.: Malboro, 1988), 71-73. Reprinted by permission of Northwestern University Press.

4 The Legacy of Nationalism Alexander De Grand Nationalism was a European phenomenon that assumed its modern form with the French Revolution. Imperialism and economic competition in the nineteenth century inflamed nationalist passions that exploded in World War I. Enrico Corradini (1865-1931) was the major exponent of Italian nationalism around the turn of the last century. He was the founder and leading theoretician of the Italian Nationalist movement, created in 1910. As editor and director of such influential literary journals as Germinal and Il Marzocco, he developed a modern strain of “proletarian nationalism” meant to defuse the revolutionary potential of the working class and to incorporate it into the nation-state. Corradini’s nationalism stressed militarism, imperialism, a strong executive, national will, social cohesion, and the replacement of the parliamentary system with a corporate regime, all aspects appropriated by fascism. Alfredo Rocco was the minister of justice (1925-1932) and a major theorist of the fascist state. Luigi Federzoni was the minister of the interior and another major exponent of an aggressive nationalism. In 1923, the Italian Nationalist Association was incorporated into the National Fascist Party. Although they were often personally frustrated, the Nationalists played a key role in making fascism both institutionally and ideologically conservative. Rocco and Federzoni used their increased influence during the Matteotti crisis to establish a regime which emphasized the importance of the state bureaucracy over the party or the Fascist unions. They joined with conservative industrialists to thwart social and economic innovations connected with the corporative state. Culturally, the Nationalists were proponents of a traditionalist outlook which impeded efforts by younger Fascists to create a new culture for the regime. They fully understood the value for the old order of hyphenated fascism, a system which lacked a common

definition of what fascism meant and allowed each person to add a modifier to the term (Catholic-Fascist, Nationalist-Fascist, Syndicalist-Fascist). Of equal importance was the fact that within the context of the regime the Nationalists offered a model toward which many of the most intelligent Fascists strove. Balbo and Grandi rapidly shed their early radicalism to become respectable monarchists and close friends of Federzoni. Symbols of success were not set by Farinacci or Achille Starace, but by the conservatives who still dominated the political and economic life of Fascist Italy. Even an innovative and dynamic Fascist politician like Giuseppe Bottai found Federzoni infinitely preferable to what he saw in the Fascist party leadership during the thirties. To this extent, the gamble of the Nationalists paid off when they accepted fusion. They found in fascism both the mass base and the instruments of social control which they had been seeking since their revolt against liberal Italy. Yet their victory had dangers. They were authoritarian modernizers whose style and rhetoric has found a recent echo in some of the Third-World dictators, like the Shah of Iran, who use violence against the Left in their own country and speak of the revolt of “the proletarian nations” of the Third World. Conservative modernization is a difficult task because it implies a certain amount of mobilization of the masses, which the conservatives abhor. Fascism offered a way around this problem, but it did so by creating a system of all-pervasive political irresponsibility under the guise of an authoritarian dictatorship. Fascism was a world of private fiefdoms (Church, industry, army, party, corporation, universities) over which Mussolini acted as mediator. In such a situation, no one could revolutionize the social or economic order, but it was also true that no one could control Mussolini adequately or exercise political power except in the name of the Duce. Thus, when Italy embarked on the road to war or when the vicious racial campaign was begun, Federzoni, who disapproved of both, could do nothing about them, nor could Bottai, Balbo, or Grandi, who all protested loudly after the fact. The Nationalists’ genius was in their ability to appropriate the political instruments, designed by others, to carry out their conservative modernization. In a moment of discouragement after the electoral disaster of 1919, Alfredo Rocco considered merging the Italian Nationalist Association into the Catholic Popular Party in order to form its right-wing and thereby influence political developments. The emergence of fascism in 1920 provided a more direct way to realize his “national syndicalism.” In the end, it was the mass nature of Fascist politics which made the movement unpredictable for the conservatives. Some thirty years later, after 1943, the Right finally took a more liberal option in the form of Christian Democracy. Any assessment of this more recent gamble falls in the realm of current events, but in Italy, where change is often illusion and where a good part of the Rocco legal codes are still in force, it is always difficult to determine who wins and who loses. Alexander De Grand, The Italian Nationalist Association and the Rise of Fascism in Italy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978), 177-79. Copyright © 1982, 1989, 2000 by the University of Nebraska Press. Reprinted by permission of the University of Nebraska Press.

II THE BIRTH OF FASCISM AND THE EARLY OPPOSITION

5 Afternoon Speech of 23 March 1919 Benito Mussolini On 23 March 1919, a heterogeneous gathering of 120 men (arditi, futurists, former socialists, republicans, nationalists, and syndicalists) met in Milan’s Piazza San Sepolcro as Mussolini proclaimed the creation of the first fasci di combattimento. (A fascio was a tightly bound bundle of rods topped off with an ax—the ancient symbol of the lictors of Rome, symbolizing discipline and the authority of Rome’s Senate.) Mussolini, having been expelled from the Italian Socialist Party for his interventionist position during World War I, here mixes together hardly compatible ideas from nationalism, the syndicalism of Georges Sorel, the idealism of the French philosopher Henri Bergson, and the theories of Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto. I shall dispense with the idea of delivering a long speech. We don’t need to place ourselves programatically on a revolutionary footing because, in a historic sense, we already did so in 1915. It isn’t necessary to set forth too analytical a program. If Bolshevism could prove to us that it guarantees a people’s greatness and that its regime is better than others, we wouldn’t be frightened by it. But it has now been demonstrated beyond a doubt that Bolshevism has ruined the economic life of Russia. Over there, every kind of economic activity, from agriculture to industry, is completely paralyzed. Famine and hunger prevail. Not only that, but Bolshevism is a peculiarly Russian phenomenon, to which our Western civilizations, starting with that of the Germans, have been resistant. We declare war against socialism, not because it is socialism, but because it has opposed nationalism. Although we can discuss the question of what socialism is, what is its program, and what are its tactics, one thing is obvious: the official Italian Socialist party has been reactionary and absolutely conservative. If its views had prevailed, our survival in the world of today would

be impossible. It is clear that the Socialist party will be unable to assume leadership of a program of renewal and reconstruction. We who have led the attack against political life in these past few years are going to expose the responsibilities of the official Socialist party. It is inevitable that majorities become static, whereas minorities are dynamic. We intend to be an active minority, to attract the proletariat away from the official Socialist party. But if the middle class thinks that we are going to be their lightning rods, they are mistaken. We go halfway toward meeting the workers. Right at the time of the armistice I wrote that we must approach the workers who were returning from the trenches, because it would be odious and Bolshevik not to recognize the rights of those who had fought in the war. We must, therefore, accept the demands of the working classes. Do they want an eight-hour workday? Tomorrow will the miners and laborers who work at night demand six hours? Sickness and old-age insurance? Worker control over industry? We shall support these demands, partly because we want the workers to get accustomed to responsibilities of management and to learn as a result that it isn’t easy to operate a business successfully. These are our postulates, ours for reasons that I have said before and because in history there are inevitable cycles whereby everything is renewed and changed. If syndicalist doctrines maintain that one can find among the masses the necessary leadership capable of taking over the management of labor, we shall not object, especially if this movement takes into account two basic features: the true nature of the productive process and the reality of the nation. As for economic democracy, we favor national syndicalism and reject state intervention whenever it aims at throttling the creation of wealth. We shall fight against technological and moral backwardness. There are industrialists who shun both technological and moral innovations. If they don’t find the strength to transform themselves, they will be swept aside. We must impress upon the workers, however, that it is one thing to destroy, and quite another to build. Destruction can be the work of an hour, but construction may require years or centuries. Economic democracy—this must be our motto. And now let us turn to the subject of political democracy. I have the impression that the present regime in Italy has failed. It is clear to everyone that a crisis now exists. During the war, all of us sensed the inadequacy of the government; today we know that our victory was due solely to the virtues of the Italian people, to the intelligence and ability of its leaders. We must not be fainthearted, now that the future nature of the political system is to be determined. We must act fast. If the present regime is going to be superceded, we must be ready to take its place. For this reason we are establishing the Fasci as organs of creativity and agitation that will be ready to rush into the piazzas and cry out, “The right to the political succession belongs to us, because we are the ones who pushed the country into the war and led it to victory!” Our program includes political reforms. The Senate must be abolished. But while we draw

up its death certificate, let us add that in recent months the Senate has proved itself to be much superior to the Chamber. [A voice: “That doesn’t take much!”] True enough, but even that little bit is a fact. In any case, we want to abolish that feudal organism. We demand universal suffrage for both men and women; a system of voting by list on a regional basis; and proportional representation. New elections will produce a national assembly, and we insist that it must decide the question of what form of government the Italian state is to have. It will choose between a republic and a monarchy; and we who have always been inclined toward republicanism declare right here and now that we favor a republic! We are not going to ... make a retrospective, historical indictment of the monarchy, however. The existing system of political representation cannot satisfy us; we want every distinct interest group to be represented directly. Since I, as a citizen, can vote according to my beliefs, then in the same manner I, as a professional man, should be permitted to vote according to my occupational outlook. It may be objected that such a program implies a return to the corporations [guilds]. That is not important. The problem is to organize occupational councils that will complement an authentic political system of representation. But let us not dwell on the details. Of all the questions to be resolved, the one that interests us most is that of creating a governing class and endowing it with the necessary powers. For it is quite useless to raise more or less urgent issues if leaders who are quite capable of dealing with them have not been produced. Our program, upon examination, may be found to resemble others. In particular, one may discover some premises that are analogous to those of the official Socialists. But our position is different in spirit, because it is based on the war and the victory. This enables us to face everything boldly. I should even like to see the Socialists assume power for a while, because it is so very easy to promise paradise and so difficult to produce it. No government tomorrow can demobilize all the soldiers in a few days, nor increase the food supply when it doesn’t exist. But in actuality we cannot allow such an experiment; for, once in power, the official Socialists would want to give Italy an imitation of the Russian phenomenon. And to this all socialist thinkers are opposed, from Branting and Thomas to Bernstein, because the Bolshevik experience, far from abolishing classes, entails a ferocious dictatorship. We are strongly opposed to all forms of dictatorship, whether they be of the saber or the cocked hat, of wealth or numbers. The only dictatorship we acknowledge is that of the will and intelligence. Therefore, I hope that this assembly will agree to the resolution that accepts the economic demands advanced by the national syndicalists. With this compass as our guide, we shall quickly succeed in creating a number of Fasci di Combattimento. Tomorrow we shall coordinate their activity simultaneously in all the centers of Italy. We are not static people; we are dynamic, and we intend to take our rightful place, which must always be in the vanguard. Charles F. Delzell, Mediterranean Fascism. 1919-1945 (New York:

Macmillan, 1970), 8-11. Copyright © 1970 by Charles F. Delzell. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

6 Squadrismo Italo Balbo Italo Balbo (1896-1940) was one of the most charismatic of the fascist leaders. An able politician, he was a ras of Ferrara—one of the strongholds of fascism. Recognizing his abilities, Mussolini named him a quadrumvir of the “March on Rome” and later minister of aviation. Balbo, like Farinacci, was a leader of squadristi and responsible for the terror and destruction unleashed around Ferrara during 1920-1922. Paid and supported by the large landowners in the surrounding countryside, with the not-so-silent complicity of local police and military leaders, Balbo organized violent “punitive expeditions.” He was involved in the murder of an anti-fascist Catholic priest, Don Giovanni Minzoni, in 1923. (When he sued a local paper for libel, he lost and was forced to pay damages.) Most remember him for his daring cross-Atlantic flights at the head of a squadron of twenty-four planes—Italy’s answer to America’s Charles Lindberg. Mussolini, suspicious as usual of any potential rival, sent Balbo to develop Libya as Italy’s ”fourth shore.“ In 1940, he was accidentally shot down and killed by an Italian air defense battery over Tobruk. This selection is an excerpt from his diary that recounts a successful raid against political enemies in July 1922. I [then] announced to [the chief of police] that I would burn down and destroy the houses of all Socialists in Ravenna if he did not give me within half an hour the means required for transporting the Fascists elsewhere. It was a dramatic moment. I demanded a whole fleet of trucks. The police officers completely lost their heads; but after half an hour they told me where I could find trucks already filled with gasoline. Some of them actually belonged to the office of the chief of police. My ostensible reason was that I wanted to get the exasperated Fascists out of the town; in reality, I was organizing a “column of fire” ... to extend our reprisals throughout the province.... We went through ... all the towns and centers in the

provinces of Forlì and Ravenna and destroyed and burned all the Red buildings.... It was a terrible night. Our passage was marked by huge columns of fire and smoke.

Italo Balbo, (1896-1940) A quadrumvir of the “March on Rome” and ras of Ferrara, Balbo was one of the most influential leaders of the fascist regime. A daring aviator, he cut a dashing figure and was rumored to be a potential rival to Mussolini. His plane was shot down in 1940 under mysterious circumstances. (Courtesy of Robert Miller, Enigma Books.)

Italo Balbo, Diario, 1922 (Milan: Mondadori, 1932), 103; translated by Charles F. Delzell in Mediterranean Fascism. 1919-1945 (New York: Macmillan. 1970), 37. Copyright © 1970 by Charles F. Delzell. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. See also Claudio G. Segrè, Italo Balbo: A Fascist Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).

7 The March on Rome Adrian Lyttelton In late October 1922. King Vittorio Emanuele III asked Mussolini to form a government. The fascists had been threatening a “March on Rome” to seize the reins of power. Instead, Mussolini arrived by train from Milan, and the march took place soon after, when there was no longer any possibility of intervention by the Italian armed forces. The March on Rome was a manifestation of a political and psychological failure on the part of the liberal state. It had its antecedents in D’Annunzio’s Fiume adventure (see chapter 3) and was soon pressed into service as a founding myth of the fascist state. Here the British historian Adrian Lyttelton reconstructs the events surrounding the March on Rome. Mussolini’s rise to power was made possible by the crisis of confidence in the Liberal regime. The urban middle class, from which alone the Liberals could have received mass support, had shown itself particularly susceptible to the appeals of Fascism. However, while the Liberals showed clear symptoms of decay, the errors and hesitations of the Socialists and Popolari had prevented them from inheriting the role of the dominant political force. The result was government by a series of uneasy compromises, without force either in Parliament or the nation and unable to end the virtual state of civil war which existed in much of Northern and Central Italy. The Government’s loss of authority also aggravated the economic crisis, and the restoration of State finances and business confidence provided yet another theme in the growing chorus of demands for a “strong government.” The crisis of “public order” and the crisis of Parliament interacted at each stage to make their solution more difficult: no one could find a political formula which would enable both these obstacles to he overcome. These were the conditions which made Fascist victory possible; but they did not make it inevitable. Although the progress of the crisis continually narrowed the range of choices, right up till the morning of 28 October the outcome remained uncertain. In the final stage, much depended on individual decision and temperament....

Giolitti’s conduct in the last stage of the crisis was oddly passive. Undoubtedly, he was weary of the intrigues and petty difficulties of parliamentary life. At eighty, rest was welcome. However, a psychological explanation of his failure to bar Mussolini’s way is not altogether convincing. If he showed himself curiously reluctant to act, this was not, I would suggest, because he had abandoned ambition. Fatigue, and perhaps scepticism of Mussolini’s real intentions, blended with constitutional punctilio and a kind of vanity. He expected to be welcomed as the saviour of Italy in her most difficult hour, and would not move before he was assured of his designation by a “regular and unambiguous decision” of those parliamentary groups for which he showed such scarce regard. He wished, in fact, to be sure of almost unanimous support, and he was disposed therefore to be very patient with the Fascists. It was also true that to provoke a government crisis could give the Fascists just the opportunity they needed if a successor ministry was not ready to take over instantly. The result, in any case, is that Mussolini’s bluff worked. During October, Mussolini negotiated with everyone in sight: with D’Annunzio, with Giolitti, with Nitti, with Orlando, with Salandra, and with Facta. Each was made to feel that Mussolini desired and needed him for the new, decisive combinazione. On the whole, Mussolini was remarkably successful in keeping each of his interlocutors in ignorance of the advances he had made to the others; however, in the case of Giolitti and Facta, given their common connections, his double game was exposed. Mussolini’s agents had simultaneously been telling Giolitti that he must take over, and suggesting to Facta that the Fascists would like to join a new government with him as leader. On 13 October to counter the effects of this disclosure, Mussolini and Bianchi were forced to pretend that they had decided in favour of a Giolitti ministry. However, they said that they would prefer to delay action until after the Fascist Congress, scheduled for 24 October at Naples. We know that Giolitti agreed to this request. In the next ten days, it is true, his suspicions were aroused. By 23 October he had come to the conclusion that a change of ministry was urgent, and was even ready to consider forming a government without the Fascists. But the loss of time could only have been remedied if he had decided to come to Rome immediately. Facta could have precipitated events himself by resigning. It must be admitted that Facta saw himself and his government in a very different light from that in which it appeared to other people. What they saw as weakness, indecision and the humiliation of the State, he saw as a “real miracle” of peaceful persuasion which had earned him universal gratitude. In this world of fantasy, the theatrical idea of a grand rally of reconciliation and patriotism presided over by D’Annunzio could enter, but the insistent rumours of blackshirt mobilization made small impression. Did Facta play a deliberate double game? Certainly he was misled by his little vanities, and with all the information of the government at his command, he failed to warn Giolitti to urgent action. But his reluctance to leave power had a real cause in the procrastination of Giolitti and, at the last moment, also in the intervention of the King. Why did the King intervene? It would seem from the few hints dropped by that most taciturn man that he was already irritated, and with reason, by Facta’s imbecile optimism and constant delays. In addition, by a lapse which if not deliberate was certainly at least Freudian, Facta had failed to keep him informed of the Giolitti-Mussolini negotiations. Yet Facta’s negotiations

with Mussolini on 26 October, of which he had informed the King, need not be construed as treachery to Giolitti. With Giolitti still in Piedmont, Facta’s argument of the need to gain time was reasonable. The ministry could not resign in the face of the reports of Fascist mobilization, by now impossible for even Facta to ignore, until they were quite certain that a successor was ready. On the other hand, Facta’s omission to inform the King about the Giolitti negotiations really does seem culpable, and undoubtedly added an extra factor of delay; but without Giolitti’s own hesitation and acceptance of the Fascist tempo it would not have been decisive. One of the “Quadrumvirs” supposed to lead the March on Rome, De Vecchi, still had misgivings. At the last moment he made an effort, supported by Dino Grandi and Costanzo Ciano, to avert the March and to bring about the formation of a conservative-Fascist ministry headed by Salandra. De Vecchi and Grandi would not have been sorry to see Mussolini’s freedom of action curtailed by a compromise. Their initiative, unlike earlier overtures, did not form part of a deliberate plan of deception; it was taken without Mussolini’s knowledge or agreement. However, the effect of their action worked in Mussolini’s favour; De Vecchi and Grandi convinced both Salandra and Orlando that the Facta government must resign immediately to avert a Fascist insurrection, but in reality they were powerless to arrest the plans for the March at such a late stage, when Michele Bianchi and Balbo were determined not to compromise. The only man who could still call a halt was Mussolini himself: at the last moment, his nerve almost failed him and it was only the determination of Michele Bianchi which held him to his resolve. The plan for the March on Rome had been drawn up in a secret meeting on 24 October in a Naples hotel. The plan called for the occupation of public buildings throughout north and central Italy as the first stage in the seizure of power; in the second stage three columns would concentrate on the roads leading into Rome, at S. Marinella, Monterotondo and Tivoli, and converge on the capital. If the Government resisted, the Ministries were to be occupied by force. In reality, the March on Rome, in the strict sense, was a colossal bluff. The city was defended by 12,000 men of the regular army, under the loyal General Pugliese, who would have been able to disperse the Fascist bands without difficulty. Many of the Fascists failed to arrive at their points of concentration; they were traveling by train and were stopped by the simple expedient of taking up a few yards of track. Those who did arrive were poorly armed and they were short of food. They could do nothing except hang around miserably in the torrential autumn rain. The grandiose “pincer movement” on Rome could never have been carried out with any chance of success. Anti-Fascist historians have quite rightly devoted much attention to puncturing the myth of the March on Rome, as part of a general depreciation of the “revolutionary” claims of Fascism. However, it should be remembered that the seizure of power by “force” in a modern State is never possible, except when the army or police carries out the coup, unless the will to resist of the Government forces has been undermined. Even the Bolshevik Revolution could only succeed because the soldiers of the regular army would not fight for the established government. This does not mean to say, however, that power would simply have fallen into the hands of the Bolsheviks without the determined action of the small groups of Red Guards. The problem can be clarified better by reference to the famous book by Curzio Malaparte,

Technique of the coup d’état. The exaggerations and inaccuracies of this work have often been pointed out; the notorious thesis of Malaparte that “what governments have to fear are the tactics of Trotzky, not the strategy of Lenin” was angrily rejected by Trotzky himself as superficial, and the description of the tactics owes much to fantasy. Although Malaparte sensed well enough the importance of disorder, or the existence of what can only be termed rather vaguely a revolutionary atmosphere, he did not unfortunately allow this perception to modify his thesis. Nevertheless if one refuses to accept Malaparte’s view of coup technique as a kind of magic, effective in all historical circumstances, his book can be read with profit. There is a “technical” element in the seizure of power, and it is likely to be more important in the case of a movement like Italian Fascism, whose motive force was weak, both ideologically and socially, when compared with that behind the major revolutions. Malaparte was right to call attention to technique, even though he overrated its importance. The March on Rome can best be viewed neither as a “revolution,” nor as a simple piece of mass choreography, but as psychological warfare. Within the complex of the Fascist operations of the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth, it is helpful to distinguish the March on Rome proper, which was not, and could not have been, carried out until all possibility of resistance had vanished from the “first act” of the plan, which consisted of the seizure or isolation of prefectures and police headquarters, railway stations, post and telegraph offices, anti-fascist newspapers and circles and Camere del Lavoro. This programme corresponds more or less to Malaparte’s description of the objectives of the new style of coup, except, of course, that it was only carried out in provincial centres and not in the capital itself. Neither Balbo, with his romantic temperament, nor Mussolini, who remained all his life surprisingly ignorant of military affairs and logistics, were likely to be altogether hard-headed in their plans; yet there are indications that the seizure of power in the provinces was, realistically, viewed by some Fascists at least as the vital stage in the insurrection.... What needs emphasis is that the March on Rome was almost inconceivably ill-planned if the intention really had been to seize the central State machine by force—when the only way would have lain in a rapid coup de main, not in a ponderous concentration. But politically it was essential to avoid surprise. The Government and the King could not be threatened too directly; they must instead be put in a position where they would have to take a positive initiative to restore order. Where Malaparte’s interpretation is best founded is in his criticism of the Government’s counter measures. These, thanks to the competence of the War Minister Soleri and General Pugliese, were, as we have seen, adequate for the protection of Rome. But in the provinces it was a different matter. General Pugliese himself, anxious to avoid bloodshed, had pointed out that to prevent the concentration of large masses of Fascists, it would be necessary to coordinate his dispositions for the defense of Rome with a general plan for the whole of Italy. Such a plan was never drawn up. The Government’s instructions to the Prefects were that they should hand over their powers to the local army command in case of grave disorder.... The King was bound to be doubly anxious about the attitude of the Army in view of his fears

that his cousin the Duke of Aosta, who had turned up in Umbria, suspiciously near the scene of operations, might have designs on the throne. But when all objective elements, the indecisiveness of the government, the partial success of Fascist tactics, the open collusion of some generals, the advice of Diaz, the fear of the Duke of Aosta, have been added up, there remains a margin of doubt which must be ascribed to the character of Victor Emmanuel. By temperament he was a pessimist, and he had little confidence in either his advisers or his subjects. He was keenly conscious that, more intelligent than the general run of monarchs, he did not have the presence or the warmth to inspire personal devotion. Finally his sceptical nature doubted, not altogether wrongly, the solidity of the Kingdom of Italy; the old lands of the Crown of Savoy were one thing, but not all Italians were Piedmontese or Sardinian. All authority depends on Confidence; and the King, rational to a fault and with a low opinion of man in general, had none. He gave way, one can suggest, because to him the evidence of his solitude had become overwhelming: the only man who could do anything was convinced of his impotence. Adrian Lyttelton, The Seizure of Power: Fascism in Italy, 1919-1929 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), 77-93. Copyright © 1987 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.

8 We Are of the People Arditi del Popolo As the first militant anti-fascist organization, the Arditi del Popolo (AdP) (1921-1922) had a troubled history but managed to cobble together diverse groups in order to combat fascism in the field. Not adverse to answering the violence of the squadristi with violence of their own, they were forsaken by the official organs of the state (police, military, judiciary) and even the leaders of the Italian Socialist and Communist parties; consequently, they were left to fend for themselves. With hindsight, most now recognize that the Arditi del Popolo represented a “lost opportunity” to confront—and perhaps to defeat—fascism in its early form. Founded in Rome at the end of June 1921 from a split in the Associazione Nazionale Arditi d’Italia by the anarchist Argo Secondari, the AdP were a physical response to the action of the fascist squads and were welcomed by all those areas which had been under the hammer of the fascist squads for months. They gained much support from the non-politicized among the working class who saw their actions as a sort of revenge and essential for their survival. Sections of the AdP were set up in various towns throughout the country, either as new creations or often on the basis of pre-existing groups such as the Lega Proletaria [Proletarian League] (linked to the Partito Socialists Italiana [Italian Socialist Party] and the Partito Comunista d’Italia [Communist Party of Italy]), the paramilitary Arditi Rossi in Trieste, the Figli di Nessuno [Children of No-one] in Genoa and Vercelli. The government of Ivanoe Bonomi was worried about the rise of this phenomenon as a treaty was about to be drawn up between the socialists and the fascists (the so-called “Pacification Pact”). On July 6, at the Botanic Gardens in Rome there was an important antifascist demonstration which was attended by thousands of workers, and was even commented upon by Pravda and Lenin (who at the time was engaged in his own battle with Bordiga of the PCd’I). Within a few days of the demonstration, the paramilitary structure of the AdP turned

into a widespread, far-reaching organization with roots spreading from Rome towards Genoa and Ancona, covering all the main towns in between—Civitavecchia, Tarquinia, Orbetello, Piombino, Livorno, Pisa, La Spezia, Monterotondo, Orte, Terni, Spoleto, Foligno, Gualdo Tadino, Jesi but also further afield in places like Parma, Piacenza, Brescia, Bergamo, Vercelli, Turin, Florence, Catania and Taranto and even in many smaller villages.

NUMBERS Considering only those sections whose existence is certain, the anti-fascist organization had at least 144 sections (summer 1921) with a total of about 20,000 members. The biggest group were the 12 Lazio sections with about 3,300 members, followed by Tuscany, 18 sections with a total of 3,000 members. Other regions were as follows: Umbria: 16 sections 2,000 members Marche: 12 sections 1,000 members Lombardy: 17 sections 2,100 members Tre Venezie: 15 sections; 2,200 members Emilia Romagna: 18 sections; 1,400 members Liguria: 4 battalions; 1,100 members Piedmont: 8 battalions; 1,300 members Sicily: 7 sections; 600 members Campania: 7 sections; 500 members Apulia: 6 sections; 500 members Sardinia: 2 sections; 150 members Abruzzo: 1 section; 200 members Calabria: 1 section; 200 members

MILITARY STRUCTURE The AdP had a very agile military structure, able to gather its forces rapidly in preparation for fascist punitive expeditions. They also tried to control the territory by marching through town streets, somewhat in the style of a neighborhood militia. The organizational structure was more concerned with military matters than with political ones, organized as they were in battalions, divided into companies and squads. Each squad was composed of 10 members plus group leader. A company was formed of 4 squads and a company commander, a battalion of 3 companies under a battalion commander. Each battalion maintained cycle squads in order to ensure links between the general command, the battalions and other areas, such as factory

groups, railway workers, munitions workers etc. Training was held by means of exercises. The AdP was not an overly centralized organization. Each Regional Committee Directorate was allowed large levels of autonomy. Clearly, the dominant political current of each group dictated its behavior. In practice, each section autonomously decided what to do and how to do it. As a result of its political independence, the AdP membership was not normally organized on the basis of membership of any party or working class movement, although in some areas certain companies were divided on this basis.

SYMBOLS Many of the symbols used by the AdP were images of war—the official symbol of the association was a skull surrounded by a laurel wreath with a dagger in its teeth and the motto “A Noi!” [To Us!]. The Directorates’ stamp was a dagger surrounded by a laurel wreath and an oak wreath. The banner of the Civitavecchia group was an axe smashing the fascist symbol (the fasces). The AdP did not have a true uniform; however they often wore black sweaters, dark-grey trousers and perhaps a red flower in their buttonholes. The association’s songs were also warlike. Their main anthem had the following chorus: We are of the people—the unconquered ranks / they have on their collars the black flames / We are moved by a force—which is sacred and strong / Death to death—death to pain. The last verse proclaims: We defend the worker / from outrage and ruin / The Ardito fights today / for the happiness of others! In September 1921 the organization’s paper L’Ardito del popolo published a more explicitly anti-fascist version of the anthem, which began: We curb the violence / of the mercenary fascists. / Everyone armed on the calvary / of human redemption. / This eternal youth / is renewed in the faith / for the people who demand equality and freedom.

THE PARTICIPANTS The organizers of the association were, depending in part on the political tradition of the area

in question, militants in the subversive or proletarian political parties or movements— anarchists, communists, maximalist socialists (particularly Third Internationalists), republicans and also revolutionary syndicalists. Apart from the desire to quell blackshirt violence through military methods, these different currents of the workers’ movement were united by a common understanding of fascism as a class reactionary force. The coagulating factor was therefore social, not political. On the social level, the prevalently proletarian nature of the movement was evident throughout the association. There were many railway workers, general workers and factory workers, farm workers and shipyard workers together with maritime and port workers, building workers, post office workers and public transport workers. There were also members from the middle classes like office workers, students, artisans and some professional types.

HISTORY Even as the association was being founded, its first successes arrived—the defense of Viterbo against the Perugian blackshirt attack—and at Sarzana where about 20 fascists were killed. Mussolini’s squads were thrown off guard and the fascist movement very nearly split with differences arising between the urban fascists who were more political and open to treaty and the rural fascists who were more against compromise. But as a result of government action, the AdP rarely received the support of the leaders of workers’ organizations and in the space of a few months were forced to reduce their forces and survive virtually clandestinely in a few areas like Parma, Ancona, Bari, Civitavecchia and Livorno where they had some limited success in the final fascist offensive during the “legalitarian” general strike of August 1922. However, even by the previous autumn the action of the government and the magistracy had born fruit—the AdP was reduced to about 50 sections with just over 6,000 members. However the reason for this lies not only with the government’s anti-paramilitary provisions (which were to affect only the proletarian defense groups, of course), the arrests, the reports to the authorities and the Magistracy’s attitude, but particularly with the political leaders and parties who failed to support, and in fact actively obstructed support for the AdP, for various reasons. The PSI (minus its Third Internationalist Fraction) was the principal workers’ party. Apart from embracing the formula of passive resistance, it illuded itself by signing the so-called “Pacification Pact” with the fascists, a sort of peace accord, in which they declared their opposition to the work of the AdP. The Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Italy (PCd‘I, precursor to the PCI) decided that the AdP was based on a partial and therefore backward objective (i.e. defense of the proletariat) and was therefore not sufficiently revolutionary. The defense of the proletariat could only take place within party-controlled structures. However, a great number of communists (and even, initially, certain leaders like Gramsci) did not accept this and remained within the AdP. It was only after threats from the “center” that the majority of PCd’I members obeyed and left the AdP to join the Communist Action Squads, a choice which was severely criticized by the Communist International which began a critical campaign against the PCd‘I in October 1921 (and which was to lead eventually to a split within the PCd’I ranks between the

“Bordiga wing” and the Moscow-approved “Gramsci wing”). Other leftist groups too soon decided against cooperation with the AdP, with the exception of the Republican Party’s Lazio, Veneto and Youth Federation sections and certain revolutionary syndicalist groups of the Parma and Bari areas. These other parties preferred to organize self-defense along party lines and frequently distancing themselves equally from the “reactionary” forces of fascists, nationalists and liberal-conservatives and the “anti-national” forces of anarchists, communists and socialists. The only proletarian component which openly supported the AdP was the libertarian area, already in itself a multicolored collection of ideas. In any event, throughout 1921 and 1922, both the Unione Sindacale Italiana (Italian Syndicalist Union) and the Unione Anarchica Italiana (Italian Anarchist Union) were favorable towards the paramilitary structure of workers’ self-defense. The anarchist daily Umanità Nova in fact was the last proletarian paper to give voice to the cause of the AdP following the adherence of Gramsci’s L’Ordine Nuovo to the party line. www.romacivica.net/anpiroma/antifascismo/antifascismo.html. Translation by Nestor McNab.

9 Our Protestantism Piero Gobetti Piero Gobetti (1901-1926) was the boy wonder of Turin. As a youth, he created and edited Energie Nuove, a literary review. At the University of Turin, he galvanized a group of young intellectuals with strong ties to Antonio Gramsci’s L’Nuovo movement. Gobetti’s journal, La Rivoluzione Liberale, was founded in 1924 and attracted some of the finest minds and pens in Italy. It became a leading voice of anti-fascism. Advocating broad civil rights, including the vote for women, judicial and penal reform, and proportional representation, Gobetti influenced an entire generation of antifascists . Gobetti argued that the influence of the Catholic Church was responsible for the political immaturity of the Italians and therefore responsible for the rise of fascism. He lamented the fact that Italy had not experienced the political and religious revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Because of his intellectual brilliance and staunch courage, Mussolini demanded that he be “taught a lesson.” Fascist squadristi severely beat Gobetti in Septembor 1925, and he died of his wounds several months later in France. His legacy, though, continued and was a driving force during the intellectual and armed Resistance. What do we mean when we say that Italy did not have a Reformation of its own and that the absence of a religious protest here accounts for Italy’s political and ideal immaturity? If this observation is understood to refer only to a problem of criticism and religious freedom, if the purpose is merely to set up the modern Protestant nations as a model, then it would be nothing more than a heretical stance by historians, and Catholics could quite rightly defend Catholicism as the instinct of the race. A Protestant movement in this county has to try to meet a more painful predicament, a

problem absolutely central in Italian life. The ascendancy of Catholicism, the conservative and actionary practice accompanied by demagogic trickery that recurs in our history, is inevitable as long as the traditional—and actual—economic conditions prevail. The most serious attempts at heresy in Italy took place during the period of free and prosperous economic activity by the communes of the Middle Ages. When the nations fronting on the Atlantic gained historical importance and the New World was discovered, the Italian economy entered a period of stasis: trade declined drastically; agriculture, naturally poor anyway and hindered by the presence of noble and ecclesiastical feudal tenures held under the benefice system, did not have a class of hard-working cultivators; and artisanal manufacturing did no more than provide some relief in a few northern cities. In these general conditions of life it became possible for the Counter Reformation to celebrate its triumph. Against pagan Rome, against the barbarians, against the modern state, the best weapon of the Church has always been generalized poverty. Impoverished plebeians were Catholic because of the lure of charity; and thus dogmatism held sway over their humbled and submissive minds. The twinning of Catholicism and fascism is perfectly logical once you recall that fascism gained its foothold during a crisis in Italy characterized by widespread unemployment; and its reform of the educational system, impeccably reactionary, makes use of religious instruction precisely to eliminate any tendency to rebellious insubordination among the common people. It is evident that all the Protestant revolutions in Europe proved their vitality through the creation of new moral character; without a moral revolution, free inquiry would be mere literature. Luther and Calvin heralded the morality of work entailed by the nascent democracies of production. They offered the Anglo-Saxon peoples a religion of autonomy and sacrifice, initiative and investment. Capitalism was born out of this individualistic revolution of consciences trained in personal responsibility, in the taste for private property, in the glow of dignity. In this sense the spirit of the Protestant democracies is identical with the laissez-faire morality of capitalism and the urge for freedom on the part of the masses. The factory is a precise reflection of the coexistence of social interests, the solidarity of work. The individual becomes accustomed to feel himself part of a productive process, an indispensable part, but, at the same time, not a sufficient part. Could there be a more perfect school of pride and humility? I will never forget the impression I had of the workers when I had the chance to visit the Fiat plant, one of the few modern, capitalist, Anglo-Saxon production facilities that exist in Italy. I sensed their attitude of control, their unfeigned selfpossession, their disdain for every kind of amateurishness. Those whose lives are centered on the plant have dignity in their work and the habit of self-sacrifice and fatigue. The rhythm of their lives is strictly based on a sense of tolerance and interdependence that disposes them to punctuality, rigor, and continuity. These capitalist virtues suggest a sort of arid asceticism, but in compensation, the repression of suffering fuels with exasperation their courage for the fight and their instinct to defend themselves politically. Anglo-Saxon maturity, the capacity to believe in definite ideologies and face danger in order

to make them prevail, the hard will to take part in the political contest with dignity, are all born in this novitiate, which signifies the last great revolution to occur after the advent of Christianity. The European war has shown now the work-based democracies thus nourished are the ones readiest for battle, the ones most zealous in defense of the national life, the ones most capable of the spirit of sacrifice: and anyone who has read Calvin could have predicted as much. The religions of individualism have always been heroic. But historically in Italy the typical traits of those engaged in production sprang from the compromises to which they were driven in the hard battle against poverty. The artisan and the merchant went into decline after the age of the communes. The agriculturalist was still the ancient serf, working the land on behalf of a master or the Church, defended only by his permanent leasehold (emphyteusis). The civilization most characteristic of Italy became that shaped by the princely courts or by office work, and the habits it formed were those of cleverness, the balancing acts of diplomacy and adulation, the taste for pleasure and rhetoric. Pauperism in Italy coincides with the impoverishment of conscience: those who do not feel that they have productive roles to play in contemporary civilization will neither have faith in themselves nor a religious devotion to their own dignity. That is the sense in which the Italian political problem—in a setting of opportunism, the shameless hunt for a job in an office, and self-abasement before the dominant social class—is a moral problem. Protestantism in Italy has to battle a parasitical economy and petit-bourgeois unanimity and seek the cadres of heresy and democratic revolution among workers acculturated to free struggle and the morality of work. That way it will cease to be an imported ideology and will become the authentic myth of an Italy trained in dignity, the myth of citizens able to sacrifice themselves for the life of the nation because they are able to govern themselves without dictators and without theocracies. Piero Gobetti, On Liberal Revolution, ed. with an introduction by Nadia Urbinati, trans. William McCuaig (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000), 137-40. Reprinted by permission of Yale University Press.

III THE CONSOLIDATION OF POWER AND THE ANTIFASCIST RESPONSE

10 The Fascisti Exposed Giacomo Matteotti Giacomo Matteotti (1885-1924) was from a wealthy family and earned a law degree from the University of Bologna. As a socialist deputy, he often challenged the fascists in the Chamber of Deputies. After the spring 1924 elections, Matteotti rose in the chamber and denounced the fascist intimidation and violence that had marred the vote. With Mussolini present, he detailed why the election should be annulled. Less than two weeks later, Matteotti was abducted off a Rome street and assassinated; his body was found in the countryside two months later. Here he catalogues the tactics of the fascists in a posthumously published work. The Fascist Government justifies its armed conquest of political power, its use of violence and the risk it incurred of igniting civil war, by the plea of the urgent necessity of restoring the authority of law and the State, and of rescuing the country from economic and financial conditions approaching utter ruin. The statistical and historical data and documents compiled in this book are a demonstration of the very contrary of this. They show that never as in this last year, during which Fascism has been in power, has the law been so thrust aside in favour of arbitrary action, the State so subjugated by a faction, or the nation so split up into two classes, a dominating and a subject class. The country’s economic and financial condition has, on the whole, continued to show the improvement and the slow recovery from the devastation of the war, which had already begun in the preceding years; but had begun thanks to the energies of the people, not the excesses and extravagances of Fascist domination. As to this latter, one thing is demonstrably true: that the profits of the speculators and the capitalists have increased in proportion as the reward of

labour and the small resources of the middle classes have diminished, while these two latter classes have lost all freedom and all that is of worth in citizenship....

THE CHRONICLE OF DEEDS. May 1923. Genoa—At Marassi-Guezzi Fascists strike workmen found in public bars, fire revolver and rifle shots, and set fire to the Friendly Society’s premises. Leonessa—Fascists command the Marshal of Carabiniere to arrest four workers who had sung the “Red Flag.” Rome—The placarding of manifestoes and of announcements of meetings is prohibited. Workers ordered to resume work on pain of dismissal. Rome—Workers distributing leaflets for May Day arrested. The Fascists Militia tear the red carnations from passers-by. Domodossola—Fascists wait for Socialists coming out of a meeting and assault them, wounding two. Arzignano (Vicenza)—The manufacturer Pelizzari ordered by Fascists to dismiss immediately twelve workers who had celebrated May Day. Genoa—A Carabiniere, Berretta Amedeo, beaten by Fascists, and obliged to undergo hospital treatment. Jesi—The local silk works ordered to close down because the work-women had celebrated May Day. Milan—Chamber of Labour entered during the night, and an attempt made to set it on fire. Cavenago Brianza—A local club attacked, furniture and banners being burned. Zelo Surigone (Brianza)—Portalupi Vittorio, together with his father, beaten in his own house by Fascists. Sesto S. Giovanni—A workman named Carlo Vignati beaten by Fascists, and taken to hospital with grave signs of concussion. Naples—The Chamber of Labour laid waste. Milan—The worker Galdi Gerolamo wounded whilst at a club, and obliged to go to hospital. Parma—The worker Tosini Guido killed by Fascists. Parma—The Deputy Picelli insulted and threatened; the worker Maluberti Enrico, a war hero, decorated with one bronze and two silver medals, beaten; Campanini Pietro, a war invalid, seriously wounded. Brescia—The Fascist Militia thrash the workers holidaying in suburban inns.

Florence—The police search for, seize and remove manifestoes. Venice—The police arrest the secretary of a cooperative society and thrash any workers who celebrated May Day. Fascists, thinking that they were firing on “subversives” celebrating May Day, kill Piciaccia and another worker named Gusti. Milan—Fascists attack a restaurant in the Strada Paullese, where dancing is going on, and fire a revolver at the mechanic Gerolamo Galdi, wounding him. Rome—Fascists make their way into a café and wound De Silveri, and then seriously wound the employee Giovanni Rotoli by stabbing him in the chest. Quezzi (Genoa)—Fascists attack a Friendly Society, and set fire to it on account of a hymn written to be sung on May Day. Damage, 100,000 lire. Naples—Workers returning to work after celebrating May Day, met with cudgels and revolvers. Three seriously wounded: Pasquale Musella, Giuseppe Riccardi, Gennaro Benincasa. Carrara—Fascists occupy the premises of the Republican party, and order the closing of establishments deserted on May Day. Bitonto—Antonio Bonassia, member of the Catholic League, killed by Fascist militiamen, and another worker seriously wounded. Cavenago Brianza—Twenty Fascists arrive in a lorry, attack the club, beat the workers, set the place on fire and make off firing revolver shots. Damage, 15,000 lire. Lumezzano (Brescia)—Fascists beat a septuagenarian because he had stayed away from work on May Day. Stellata (Ferrara)—For having celebrated May Day, Enzo Zaniratti, a war cripple, assaulted and brutally beaten at night. Mantua—The provincial Fascist Secretariat proposes the dismissal of workers who celebrated May Day. Rome—The police give notice to contractors to dismiss many bricklayers who had taken part in the May Day celebrations; more than a hundred arrested and obliged to return to the villages whence they had been banished by the violence of the Fascists. A Fascist leader demands that the Prefect should take rigorous steps against a group of workers who were absent from work on May Day. Florence—The mechanic Bencini Antonio beaten by Fascists for absence from work on May Day. Poggio a Caiano—The merchants, Allori Bros., beaten by five Fascists. Varese—Fascists beat Domenico Camillucci di Orino and drive him from his district. Galeata (Florence)—Fascists assault and beat those present at a funeral party which several Socialists are attending.

Bozzolo (Mantua)—The engineer Giovanni Vialli, decorated with the silver medal for war service, is severely beaten by three Fascists and banished from the Commune where he works. Bisceglie—As a reprisal the Fascists set fire to the premises of the Republican section and of the Bricklayers’ League. Cusano Milanino—Fifteen Fascists attack the Socialist Cooperative Society, and wound Antonio Rusconi. Uggiate (Como)—The parish priest Salvatore Sironi banished from the district. Biella—The Socialist Giardini Selvini, secretary of the Textile League, assaulted and beaten by Fascists. Pompeii—Several Fascists illtreat some young ladies who were carrying red flowers to the Madonna. S. Prospero Strinati—Morini Raimondo, manager of the Consumers’ Cooperative Society, beaten by Fascists. Ferentino (Rome)—Catholic youths assaulted and beaten for wearing the badges of their associations. Bitonto—The Socialist Buonavia Gaetano shot with a revolver by Fascists and killed. In the same mélée the worker Francesco Giorgi seriously wounded. Alessandria—Conflict between Fascist railway police and other Fascists. Alessandria station invaded and numerous rifle shots fired; several wounded. Viareggio—Attack on the Republican Hall. Pistoia—The Masonic Lodge in Corso Vittorio Emanuele attacked by Fascists, who cany away administrative material and objects. Borgosesia—The manufacturers Dominietto and Chiarino beaten.... [Editor’s note: This list continus for another fifteen pages.] The foregoing is only a list of some typical instances of the manifestations of Fascist lawlessness which were continuous in the first year of Fascist government. Lawlessness is now a permanent feature, especially in some parts of Italy, where the law and the constitution and the very organs of the law have been superseded, lawless government being imposed on the citizens by violence or, in the end, merely by threats of violence. Giacomo Matteotti, The Fascisti Exposed (New York: Fertig, 1969), 1, 84102, passim.

11 Speech of 3 January 1925 Benito Mussolini Mussolini’s speech before the Chamber of Deputies on 3 January 1925 is universally recognized as the beginning of the full fascist dictatorship. Previously, Mussolini had tried to maintain a facade of parliamentary, representative government. But the assassination of Giacomo Matteotti in June 1924, after he had revealed widespread electoral fraud, pushed the regime into a crisis. Throughout the summer and fall of 1924, Mussolini held a tenuous grip on power, but King Vittorio Emanuele III refused to ask for his resignation. On 3 January 1925, Mussolini rose in the Chamber of Deputies and challenged his political opponents to remove him from office. Il Duce claimed full political, moral, and historical responsibility for what had happened and promised that he would “resolve” the problem in the next forty-eight hours. During the course of 1925-1926, Mussolini and the fascist regime effectively dismantled what remained of liberal, parliamentary Italy. Freedom of the press and of association were banned by decree, and all political parties were outlawed. Political opponents such as Antonio Gramsci, notwithstanding their parliamentary immunity, were arrested and sentenced to long prison terms by the Special Tribunal. Gentlemen, the speech that I am about to deliver should not perhaps be classified, strictly speaking, as a parliamentary address.... A speech of this sort may or may not lead to a vote on policy. Let it be known that in any case I do not seek such a vote on policy.... I have had too many of them. [“Good!”] Article 47 of the Statuto says: “The Chamber of Deputies has the right to impeach the King’s Ministers and to bring them before the High Court of Justice [the Senate].” I ask formally whether there is anyone, either in or out of this Chamber, who wants to avail himself of Article

47? [Vigorous, prolonged applause.] ... My speech therefore will be very clear and such as to bring about absolute clarification.... Gentlemen, it is I who raise in the hall the charges against myself. It is said that I have created a Cheka. Where? When? How? No one can answer! In Russia there has really been a Cheka, which has executed, without any trial, between 150 and 160,000 people.... In Russia there has been a Cheka which has systematically imposed terror on all the bourgeois class and on individual members of the bourgeoisie—a Cheka which is said to be the Red sword of the revolution. But an Italian Cheka has never existed. Thus far nobody has ever denied me three qualities: a certain intelligence, much courage, and a sovereign disdain for filthy lucre. [Vigorous, prolonged applause.] If I had created a Cheka, I would have done so according to the criteria that I have always imposed on that degree of violence which cannot be eliminated from history. I have always said—and let those who have followed me through these five years of difficult battle remember this—that violence, to be effective, must be surgical, intelligent, and chivalrous. [Approval .] Now the acts of this so-called Cheka have always been unintelligent, disorganized, and stupid. [“Very good!”] ... You certainly remember my speech of June 7 [1924]. You may find it easy to recall that week of heated political passions when in this Chamber the minority and majority were clashing every day, to the point that some despaired of establishing the necessary conditions for political and civil co-existence between the two hostile parts of the Chamber.... I then delivered a speech that completely clarified the atmosphere. I said to the opposition: I recognize your right in principle and even in fact. You may disregard Fascism as a historical experience; you may subject all the measures of the Fascist government to immediate criticism. I recall and I still have before my eyes the sight of this part of the Chamber, where everyone understood and felt that at that moment I had uttered profound and living words and had established the terms of that necessary co-existence without which no political assembly of any kind is possible. [Approval.] Now, after such a success ... how could I, unless I were struck by madness, think of committing a crime, or even giving the slightest, silliest affront to a foe whom I had respected because he possessed a certain cranerie, a certain courage that at times resembled my own courage and my own stubbornness in upholding my points of view? [Lively applause.] What should I have done? Some cricket-brains demanded of me at that time cynical gestures that I did not feel like making because they were deeply repugnant to my conscience. [Approval.] Or should I have committed some act of force? What force? Against whom? For what purpose? ... It was at the end of that month—that month which is marked indelibly in my life—that I said: “I want peace for the Italian people.” I wanted to bring political life back to normalcy. But what was the reply to this principle of mine? First of all, there was the Aventine secession, an unconstitutional secession that was clearly revolutionary. [Lively approval.]

Then there followed a press campaign that lasted through June, July, and August; a filthy and wretched campaign that dishonored us for three months. [Vigorous, prolonged applause.] The most fantastic, most horrendous, most macabre lies were widely published in all the papers! A veritable outbreak of necrophilia took place. [Approval. ] There were inquiries even into what takes place underground in the grave. They invented lies; they knew they were lying, but they went right on lying. And I remained calm, tranquil in the midst of this storm, which will be remembered with a deep sense of shame by those who come after us. [Signs of approval.] In the meanwhile, this campaign bore fruit. On September 11 someone sought to avenge the dead man and shot one of our best people, a man who died in poverty.... Nevertheless, I continued my effort at normalization. I repressed illegal acts. It is no lie that today hundreds of Fascists are still in jail! [Comments.] It is no lie that Parliament was reconvened regularly at the prescribed date and that all the budgets were discussed no less regularly. It is no lie that the Militia swore an oath of loyalty, and that generals were appointed to all the zonal commands. Finally, a question was raised that has been of great concern to us—a request that the parliamentary immunity of the Honorable Giunta be lifted and that he resign and stand trial. The Chamber was shocked. I understood the meaning of this feeling of revolt. And yet, after forty-eight hours, I once more gave in, and relying on my prestige and growing strength, I bent this riotous and reluctant assembly to my will and said: “Let the resignation be accepted.” It was accepted. But even that was not enough. I performed one last gesture of normalization. I proposed a reform of the electoral law. And how did they respond to all of this? They responded with an intensified campaign. They said that Fascism is a horde of barbarians encamped in the country, a movement of bandits and marauders! They raised a moral question, and we are familiar with the sad story of moral questions in Italy. [Lively signs of approval.] ... Very well, I now declare before this assembly and before the entire Italian people that I assume, I alone, full political, moral, and historical responsibility for all that has happened. [Very vigorous and repeated applause. Shouts of “We are with you! All with you!”] If more or less distorted phrases are enough to hang a man, then bring out the gallows, bring out the rope! If Fascism has been nothing more than castor oil and the rubber truncheon, instead of being a proud passion of the best part of Italian youth, then I am to blame! [Applause.] If Fascism has been a criminal association, then I am the chief of this criminal association! [Vigorous applause.] ... If all the violence has been the result of a particular historical, political, and moral climate, then let me take the responsibility for this, because I have created this historical, political, and moral climate with a propaganda that has gone forth from the intervention until today. In recent days not just the Fascists but many citizens have asked themselves: Do we have a government? [Signs of approval.] Are these men, or are they puppets? Do these men possess

manly dignity? And do they also have a government that possesses it? [Approval.] I deliberately wanted things to come to this extreme point. Enriched by my lifetime of experience, I tested out the party. And just as one must beat certain metals with a hammer to determine their temper, so I have tested the temper of certain men.... I have tested myself. And note well that I would not have resorted to such measures if the interests of the nation had not been at stake. But a people does not respect a government that lets itself be despised! [Signs of approval.] People want to see their own dignity reflected in that of the government, and people, even before I said it, were declaring: “Enough! We have gone far enough!” And why have we gone far enough? Because the Aventine sedition has a republican background! [Lively applause; shouts of‘“Long live the King!”] ... This sedition on the part of the Aventine has resulted in a situation in which any Fascist in Italy is in danger of his life! In the two months of November and December alone, eleven Fascists were killed.... And then three fires have taken place in one month, mysterious fires, fires in the railway system and yards in Rome, Parma, and Florence.... You see from this situation that the sedition of the Aventine has had profound repercussions throughout the country. For this reason, the moment has come when we must say, “Enough!” When two irreducible elements are locked in a struggle, the solution is force. In history, there never has been any other solution, and there never will be. Right now, I make bold to declare that the problem will be resolved. Fascism, the Government, and the Party are completely ready. Gentlemen, you have suffered from illusions! You thought that Fascism was finished because I was restraining it, that it was dead because I was punishing it and because I had the audacity to say so. But if I were to employ the hundredth part of the energy in unleashing it that I have used in restraining it, you would understand then. [Vigorous applause.] But there will be no need for this, because the Government is strong enough to break the Aventine’s sedition completely and definitely. [Vigorous, prolonged applause.] Gentlemen, Italy wants peace, tranquility, calm in which to work. We shall give her this tranquility and calm, by means of love if possible but by force if necessary. [Lively applause.] You may be sure that within the next forty-eight hours after this speech, the situation will be clarified in every field. [Vigorous, prolonged applause; comments.] Everyone must realize that what I am planning to do is not the result of personal caprice, of a lust for power, or of an ignoble passion, but solely the expression of my unlimited and mighty love for the fatherland. [Ligorous, prolonged and reitetated applause. Repeated shouts of “Long live Mussolini!” The ministers and many deputies congratulate the Honorable President of the Council. The meeting is ended.] Charles F. Delzell, Mediterranean Fascism, 1919-1945 (New York: Macmillan. 1970), 57-61. Copyright © 1970 by Charles F. Delzell. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

12 The Eternal Tend ency toward Fascism Carlo Levi Although he earned a degree in medicine, Carlo Levi (1902-1975) was better known as a writer and painter. Along with Piero Gobetti, he participated in anti-fascist activities in Turin. Levi joined the Justice and Liberty movement , founded by Carlo Rosselli in Paris in 1929. For this, Levi was sentenced to confino, or domestic exile, in the Lucania region of the Italian south. That experience was the basis for his most famous work, Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (Christ stopped at Eboli) (1945). The title is a saying of the peasants where Levi was being held; Eboli is a town on the Tirrenian coast, and the peasants meant that Christ and civilization never made it as far as their poor mountain town. The word cristiani in the local dialect meant not so much “Christians” as “civilized people.” Here Levi reflects on the unbridgetible abyss between the peasants and the “State. ” He is returning to confino after a brief period in Turin with other anti-fascists. At bottom, as I now perceived, they were all unconscious worshipers of the State. Whether the State they worshiped was the Fascist State or the incarnation of quite another dream, they thought of it as something that transcended both its citizens and their lives. Whether it was tyrannical or paternalistic, dictatorial or democratic, it remained to them monolithic, centralized, and remote. This was why the political leaders and my peasants could never understand one another. The politicians oversimplified things, even while they clothed them in philosophical expressions. Their solutions were abstract and far removed from reality; they were schematic halfway measures, which were already out of date. Fifteen years of Fascism had erased the problem of the South from their minds and if now they thought of it again they saw it only as a part of some other difficulty, through the fictitious generalities of party and class and even race. Some saw it as a purely technical and economic matter. They spoke of public works, industrialization, and domestic absorption of the plethora of would-be emigrants, or else they resurrected the old Socialist slogan of “making Italy over.” Others saw the South burdened with an unfortunate historical heredity, a tradition of enslavement to the

Bourbons which liberal democracy might little by little relieve. Some said that the question of the South was just one more case of capitalist oppression, which only rule by the proletariat could supplant. Others spoke of inherent racial inferiority, considering the South a dead weight on the economy of the North, and studied possible measures to be taken by the government to remedy this sad state of things. All of them agreed that the State should do something about it, something concretely useful, and beneficent, and miraculous, and they were shocked when I told them that the State, as they conceived it, was the greatest obstacle to the accomplishment of anything. The State, I said, cannot solve the problem of the South, because the problem which we call by this name is none other than the problem of the State itself. There will always be an abyss between the State and the peasants, whether the State be Fascist, Liberal, Socialist or take on some new form in which the middle-class bureaucracy still survives. We can bridge the abyss only when we succeed in creating a government in which the peasants feel they have some share. Public works and land reclamation are all very fine, but they are not the answer. Domestic absorption of the emigrants might yield some results, but it would make the whole of Italy, instead of just the South, into one huge colony. Plans laid by a central government, however much good they may do, still leave two hostile Italys on either side of the abyss. The difficulties we were discussing, I explained to them, were far more complex than they realized. There are three distinct sides to it, which are three aspects of one central reality; they can neither be understood nor resolved separately. First of all, we are faced with two very different civilizations, neither of which can absorb the other. Country and city, a pre-Christian civilization and one that is no longer Christian, stand face to face. As long as the second imposes its deification of the State upon the first, they will be in conflict. The war in Africa and the wars that are yet to come are in part the result of this age-old quarrel, which has now reached an acute point, and not in Italy alone. Peasant civilization will always be the loser but it will not be entirely crushed. It will persevere under a cover of patience, interrupted by sporadic explosions, and the spiritual crisis will continue. Brigandage, the peasant war, is a symptom of what I mean, and this upheaval of the last century is not the last of its kind. Just as long as Rome rules over Matera, Matera will be lawless and despairing, and Rome despairing and tyrannical. The second aspect of the trouble is economic, the dilemma of poverty. The land has been gradually impoverished: the forests have been cut down, the rivers have been reduced to mountain streams that often run dry, and livestock has become scarce. Instead of cultivating trees and pasture lands there has been an unfortunate attempt to raise wheat in soil that does not favor it. There is no capital, no industry, no savings, no schools; emigration is no longer possible, taxes are unduly heavy, and malaria is everywhere. All this is in large part due to the ill-advised intentions and efforts of the State, a State in which the peasants cannot feel they have a share, and which has brought them only poverty and deserts. Finally, there is the social side of the problem. It is generally held that the big landed estates and their owners are at fault, and it is true that these estates are not charitable institutions. But if the absentee owner, who lives in Naples, or Rome, or Palermo, is an enemy of the peasants,

he is not the worst of the enemies they have to cope with. He, at least, is far away and does not interfere with their daily life. Their real enemies, those who cut them off from any hope of freedom and a decent existence, are to be found among the middle-class village tyrants. This class is physically and morally degenerate and no longer able to fill its original function. It lives off petty thievery and the bastardized tradition of feudal rights. Only with the suppression of this class and the substitution of something better can the difficulties of the South find a solution. The problem, in all of its three aspects, existed before the advent of Fascism. But Fascism, while hushing it up and denying its existence, aggravated it to the breaking point, because under Fascism the middle class took over and identified itself with the power of the State. We cannot foresee the political forms of the future, but in a middle-class country like Italy, where middleclass ideology has infected the masses of workers in the city, it is probable, alas, that the new institutions arising after Fascism, through either gradual evolution or violence, no matter how extreme and revolutionary they may be in appearance, will maintain the same ideology under different forms and create a new State equally far removed from real life, equally idolatrous and abstract, a perpetuation under new slogans and new flags of the worst features of the eternal tendency toward Fascism. Unless there is a peasant revolution we shall never have a true Italian revolution, for the two are identical. The problem of the South cannot be solved within the framework of the Fascist State nor of that which may follow it, under a different label. It will solve itself if we can create new political ideals and a new kind of State which will belong also to the peasants and draw them away from their inevitable anarchy and indifference. Nor can the South solve its difficulties with its own efforts alone. In this case we should have a civil war, a new horrible form of brigandage which would end, as usual, with the defeat of the peasants and a general disaster. All of Italy must join in and, in order to do so, must be renewed from top to bottom. We must make ourselves capable of inventing a new form of government, neither Fascist, nor Communist, nor even Liberal, for all three of these are forms of the religion of the State. We must rebuild the foundations of our concept of the State with the concept of the individual, which is its basis. For the juridical and abstract concept of the individual we must substitute a new concept, more expressive of reality, one that will do away with the now unbridgeable gulf between the individual and the State. The individual is not a separate unit, but a link, a meeting place of relationships of every kind. This concept of relationship, without which the individual has no life, is at the same time the basis of the State. The individual and the State coincide in theory and they must be made to coincide in practice as well, if they are to survive. This reversal of the concept of political life, which is gradually and unconsciously ripening among us, is implicit in the peasant civilization. And it is the only path which will lead us out of the vicious circle of Fascism and anti-Fascism. Carlo Levi, Christ stopped at Eboli, trans. Frances Frenaye (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1947), 249-53. Translation copyright © 1947, renewed 1974 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus

and Giroux, LLC. See also David Ward, Antifascisms: Cultural Politics in Italy, 1943-1946. Benedetto Croce and the Liberals, Carlo Levi and the “Actionists” (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996).

13 Toward s Anarchism Errico Malatesta Italian anarchism was a potent political force during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta (1853-1932) lived a life that spanned eighty years and saw events as diverse as the unification of Italy and the establishment of fascism. As an anarchist, he had the admiration and devotion of three generations of anarchists at the time of his death. As a lawbreaker, be had the respect of the police and those sworn to uphold the law. As a man, he strove to uphold those unwritten but necessary laws that are the center of civilized society and recognized as such by compassionate and intelligent men. His actions--volunteering for work in a hospital during a cholera epidemic, donating his inheritance of land and houses to those who lived in them, adopting an orphaned child—were a manifestation of his thinking and writings on society. Feared by governments, attacked in the press, exiled from his home, Malatesta died under the eyes of fascist police. It is a general opinion that we, because we call ourselves revolutionists, expect Anarchism to come with one stroke—as the immediate result of an insurrection which violently attacks all that exists and which replaces all with institutions that are really new. And to tell the truth this idea is not lacking among some comrades who also conceive the revolution in such a manner. This prejudice explains why so many honest opponents believe Anarchism a thing impossible; and it also explains why some comrades, disgusted with the present moral condition of the people and seeing that Anarchism cannot come about soon, waver between an extreme dogmatism which blinds them to the realities of life and an opportunism which practically makes them forget that they are Anarchists and that for Anarchism they should struggle.

Of course the triumph of Anarchism cannot be the consequence of a miracle; it cannot come about in contradiction to the laws of development (an axiom of evolution that nothing occurs without sufficient cause), and nothing can be accomplished without adequate means. If we should want to substitute one government for another, that is, impose our desires upon others, it would only be necessary to combine the material forces needed to resist the actual oppressors and put ourselves in their place. But we do not want this; we want Anarchism which is a society based on free and voluntary accord—a society in which no one can force his wishes on another and in which everyone can do as he pleases and together all will voluntarily contribute to the well-being of the community. But because of this Anarchism will not have definitively and universally triumphed until all men will not only not want to be commanded but will not want to command; nor will Anarchism have succeeded unless they will have understood the advantage of solidarity and know how to organize a plan of social life wherein there will no longer be traces of violence and imposition. And as the conscience, determination, and capacity of men continuously develop and find means of expression in the gradual modification of the new environment and in the realization of the desires in proportion to their being formed and becoming imperious, so it is with Anarchism; Anarchism cannot come but little by little; slowly, but surely, growing in intensity and extension. Therefore, the subject is not whether we accomplish Anarchism today, tomorrow, or within ten centuries, but that we walk towards Anarchism today, tomorrow, and always. Anarchism is the abolition of exploitation and oppression of man by man, that is, the abolition of private property and government; Anarchism is the destruction of misery, of superstitions, of hatred. Therefore, every blow given to the institutions of private property and to the government, every exaltation of the conscience of man, every disruption of the present conditions, every lie unmasked, every part of human activity taken away from the control of the authorities, every augmentation of the spirit of solidarity and initiative, is a step towards Anarchism. The problem lies in knowing how to choose the road that really approaches the realization of the ideal and in not confusing real progress with hypocritical reforms. For with the pretext of obtaining immediate ameliorations these false reforms tend to distract the masses from the struggle against authority and capitalism; they serve to paralyze their actions and make them hope that something can be attained through the kindness of the exploiters and governments. The problem lies in knowing how to use the little power we have—that we go on achieving, in the most economical way, more prestige for our goal. There is in every Country a government which, with brutal force, imposes its laws on all; it compels all to be subjected to exploitation and to maintain, whether they like it or not, the existing institutions. It forbids the minority groups to actuate their ideas, and prevents the social organizations in general from modifying themselves according to, and with, the modifications of public opinion. The normal peaceful course of evolution is arrested by violence, and thus with violence it is necessary to reopen that course. It is for this reason that

we want a violent revolution today; and we shall want it always—so long as man is subject to the imposition of things contrary to his natural desires. Take away the governmental violence and ours would have no reason to exist. We cannot as yet overthrow the prevailing government; perhaps tomorrow from the ruins of the present government we cannot prevent the arising of another similar one. But this does not hinder us, nor will it tomorrow, from resisting whatever form of authority—refusing always to submit to its laws whenever possible, and constantly using force to oppose force. Every weakening of whatever kind of authority, each accession of liberty will be a progress towards Anarchism; always it should be conquered—never asked for; always it should serve to give us greater strength in the struggle; always it should make us consider the state as an enemy with whom we should never make peace; always it should make us remember well that the decrease of the ills produced by the government consists in the decrease of its attributions and powers, and the resulting terms should be determined not by those who governed but by those were governed. By government we mean any person or group of persons in the state, country, community, or association who has the right to make laws and inflict them upon those who do not want them. We cannot as yet abolish private property; we cannot regulate the means of production which is necessary to work freely; perhaps we shall not be able to do so in the next insurrectional movement. But this does not prevent us now, nor will it in the future, from continually opposing capitalism or any other form of despotism. And each victory, however small, gained by the workers against their exploiters, each decrease of profit, every bit of wealth taken from the individual owners and put at the disposal of all, shall be a progress—a forward step towards Anarchism. Always it should serve to enlarge the claims of the workers and to intensify the struggle; always it should be accepted as a victory over an enemy and not as a concession for which we should be thankful; always we should remain firm in our resolution to take with force, as soon as it will be possible, those means which the private owners, protected by the government, have stolen from the workers. The right of force having disappeared, the means of production being placed under the management of whoever wants to produce, the result must be the fruit of a peaceful evolution. Anarchism could not be, nor would it ever be if not for these few who want it and want it only in those things they can accomplish without the cooperation of the non-anarchists. This does not necessarily mean that the ideal of Anarchism will make little or no progress, for little by little its ideas will extend to more men and more things until it will have embraced all mankind and all life’s manifestations. Having overthrown the government and all the existing dangerous institutions which with force it defends, having conquered complete freedom for all and with it the means of regulating labor without which liberty would be a lie, and while we are struggling to arrive at this point, we do not intend to destroy those things which we little by little will reconstruct. For example, there functions in the present society the service of supplying food. This is being done badly, chaotically, with great waste of energy and material and with capitalist

interests in view; but after all, one way or another we must eat. It would be absurd to want to disorganize the system of producing and distributing food unless we could substitute for it something better and more just. There exists a postal service. We have thousands of criticisms to make, but in the meantime we use it to send our letters, and shall continue to use it, suffering all its faults, until we shall be able to correct or replace it. There are schools, but how badly they function. But because of this we do not allow our children to remain in ignorance—refusing their learning to read and write. Meanwhile we wait and struggle for a time when we shall be able to organize a system of model schools to accommodate all. From this we can see that, to arrive at Anarchism, material force is not the only thing to make a revolution; it is essential that the workers, grouped according to the various branches of production, place themselves in a position that will insure the proper functioning of their social life—without the aid or need of capitalists or governments. And we see also that the Anarchist ideals are far from being in contradiction, as the “scientific socialists” claim, to the laws of evolution as proved by science; they are a conception which fits these laws perfectly; they are the experimental system brought from the field of research of social realization. Errico Malatesta, Towards Anarchism (Edmonton, Canada: Black Cat Press, 1982). Reprinted by permission of Black Cat Press. See also Vernon Richard, ed., The Anarchist Revolution: Polemical Articles 1924-1931 (London: Freedom Press, 1995), and Vernon Richards, ed., Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas (London: Freedom Press, 1984).

IV THE FASCIST STATE AND DISSIDENT VOICES

14 The Doctrine of Fascism Benito Mussolini Mussolini often boasted that fascism bad no,formal ideology. But as the movement transformed itself into a regime, many felt it necessary that a coherent statement of political ideology was needed. The task was first assigned to the preeminent fascist intellectual, Giovanni Gentile, but that was overruled by the Partito Nazionale Fascista because of Gentile’s hostility to the Lateran Accords. So the following article, although deeply influenced by Gentile, appeared with only Mussolini’s signature in the 1932 edition of the Enciclopedia italiana, edited by none other than Gentile. Mussolini makes a concerted attempt to trace a respectable intellectual lineage for fascism. Here, in as concise form as possible, is how fascism thought of itself.

FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS 1. Like every sound political conception, Fascism is both practice and thought; action in which a doctrine is immanent, and a doctrine which, arising out of a given system of historical forces, remains embedded in them and works there from within.... There is no concept of the State which is not fundamentally a concept of life, philosophy or intuition, a system of ideas which develops logically or is gathered up into a vision or into a faith, but which is always, at least virtually, an organic conception of the world. 2. Thus Fascism could not be understood in many of its practical manifestations as a party organization, as a system of education, as a discipline, if it were not always looked at in the light of its whole way of conceiving life, a spiritualized way. The world seen through Fascism is not this material world which appears on the surface, in which man is an individual separated from all others and standing by himself.... The man of Fascism is an individual who is nation and fatherland, which is a moral law, binding together individuals and the generations

into a tradition and a mission, suppressing the instinct for a life enclosed within the brief round of pleasure in order to restore within duty a higher life free from the limits of time and space; a life in which the individual, through the denial of himself, through the sacrifice of his own private interests, through death itself, realizes that completely spiritual existence in which his value as a man lies.

“Vinceremo!” (“We will win!”) Mussolini pins a medal on the uniform of a young Balilla during the second world war. The Balilla were young boys (age eight to fourteen) named after a Genoese youth who fought against the Austrians. (Courtesy the Italian American Foundation of the East Bay, [Oakland, Calif.].) 3. Therefore it is a spiritualized conception, itself the result of the general reaction of modern times against the flabby materialistic positivism of the nineteenth century.... Fascism desires an active man, one engaged in activity with all his energies: it desires a man conscious of the difficulties that exist in action and ready to face them. It conceives of life as a struggle, considering that it behooves man to conquer for himself that life truly worthy of him, creating first of all in himself the instrument (physical, moral, intellectual) in order to construct it. Thus for the single individual, thus for the nation, thus for humanity.... 4. This positive conception of life is clearly an ethical conception. It covers the whole of reality, not merely the human activity which controls it. No action can be divorced from moral judgment; there is nothing in the world which can be deprived of the value which belongs to everything in its relation to moral ends. Life, therefore, as conceived by the Fascist, is serious, austere, religious: the whole of it is poised in a world supported by the moral and responsible forces of the spirit. The Fascist disdains the “comfoitable” life. 5. Fascism is a religious conception in which man is seen in his immanent relationship with a superior law and with an objective will that transcends the particular individual and raises him to conscious membership in a spiritual society. Whoever has seen in the religious politics of the Fascist regime nothing but mere opportunism has not understood that Fascism besides being a system of government is also, and above all, a system of thought. 6. Fascism is a historical conception, in which man is what he is only in so far as he works with the spiritual process in which he finds himself, in the family or social group, in the nation and in the history in which all nations collaborate. From this follows the great value of tradition, in memories, in language, in customs, in the standards of social life. Outside history man is nothing. Consequently Fascism is opposed to all the individualistic abstractions of a materialistic nature like those of the eighteenth century; and it is opposed to all Jacobin utopias and innovations. It does not consider that “happiness” is possible upon earth, as it appeared to be in the desire of the economic literature of the eighteenth century, and hence it rejects all theological theories according to which mankind would reach a definitive stabilized condition at a certain period in history.... 7. Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State; and it is for the individual in so far as he coincides with the State, which is the conscience and universal will of man in his historical existence. It is opposed to classical Liberalism, which arose from the necessity of reacting against absolutism, and which brought its historical purpose to an end when the State was transformed into the conscience and will of the people. Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the true reality of the

individual. And if liberty is to be the attribute of the real man, and not of that abstract puppet envisaged by individualistic Liberalism, Fascism is for liberty. And for the only liberty which can be a real thing, the liberty of the State and of the individual within the State. Therefore, for the Fascist, everything is in the State, and nothing human or spiritual exists, much less has value, outside the State. In this sense Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State, the synthesis and unity of all values, interprets, develops and gives strength to the whole life of the people. 8. Outside the State there can be neither individuals nor groups (political parties, associations, syndicates, classes). Therefore Fascism is opposed to Socialism, which confines the movement of history within the class struggle and ignores the unity of classes established in one economic and moral reality in the State; and analogously it is opposed to class syndicalism.... 9. Individuals form classes according to the similarity of their interests, they form syndicates according to differentiated economic activities within these interests; but they form first, and above all, the State, which is not to be thought of numerically as the sum-total of individuals forming the majority of the nation. And consequently Fascism is opposed to Democracy, which equates the nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of that majority.... 10. It is not the nation that generates the State, as according to the old naturalistic concept which served as the basis of the political theories of the national States of the nineteenth century. Rather the nation is created by the State, which gives to the people, conscious of its own moral unity, a will and therefore an effective existence.... 11. The nation as the State is an ethical reality which exists and lives in so far as it develops. To arrest its development is to kill it. Therefore the State is not only the authority which governs and gives the form of laws and the value of spiritual life to the wills of individuals, but it is also a power that makes its will felt abroad, making it known and respected, in other words, demonstrating the fact of its universality in all the necessary directions of its development. It is consequently organization and expansion, at least virtually. Thus it can be likened to the human will which knows no limits to its development and realizes itself in testing its own limitlessness. 12. The Fascist State, the highest and most powerful form of personality, is a force, but a spiritual force, which takes over all the forms of the moral and intellectual life of man.... It is the form, the inner standard and the discipline of the whole person; it saturates the will as well as the intelligence. Its principle, the central inspiration of the human personality living in the civil community, pierces into the depths and makes its home in the heart of the man of action as well as of the thinker, of the artist as well as of the scientist: it is the soul of the soul. 13. Fascism, in short, is not only the giver of laws and the founder of institutions, but the educator and promoter of spiritual life. It wants to remake, not the forms of human life, but its content, man, character, faith. And to this end it requires discipline and authority that can enter into the spirits of men and there govern unopposed. Its sign, therefore, is the Lictors’ rods, the symbol of unity, of strength and justice.

POLITICAL AND SOCIAL DOCTRINE 1.... Fascism was not given out to the wet nurse of a doctrine elaborated beforehand round a table: it was born of the need for action; it was not a party, but in its first two years it was a movement against all parties. The name which I gave to the organization defined its characteristics. Nevertheless, whoever rereads, in the now crumpled pages of the time, the account of the constituent assembly of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento will not find a doctrine, but a series of suggestions, of anticipations, of admonitions, which when freed from the inevitable vein of contingency, were destined later, after a few years, to develop into a series of doctrinal attitudes which made of Fascism a self-sufficient political doctrine able to face all others, both past and present.... 2.... Fascism is today clearly defined not only as a regime but as a doctrine. And I mean by this that Fascism today, self-critical as well as critical of other movements, has an unequivocal point of view of its own, a criterion, and hence an aim, in face of all the material and intellectual problems which oppress the people of the world. 3. Above all, Fascism, in so far as it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from the political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor in the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism— born of a renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it. All other trials are substitutes, which never really put a man in front of himself in the alternative of life and death.... 6. After Socialism, Fascism attacks the whole complex of democratic ideologies and rejects them both in their theoretical premises and in their applications or practical manifestations. Fascism denies that the majority, through the mere fact of being a majority, can rule human societies; it denies that this majority can govern by means of a periodical consultation; it affirms the irremediable, fruitful and beneficent inequality of men, who cannot be leveled by such a mechanical and extrinsic fact as universal suffrage.... Democracy is a regime without a king, but with very many kings, perhaps more exclusive, tyrannical and violent than one king even though a tyrant.... 9. The theory of Fascist authority has nothing to do with the police State. A party that governs a nation in a totalitarian way is a new fact in history. References and comparisons are not possible. Fascism takes over from the ruins of Liberal Socialistic democratic doctrines those elements which still have a living value. It preserves those that can be called the established facts of history, it rejects all the rest, that is to say the idea of a doctrine which holds good for all times and all peoples. If it is admitted that the nineteenth century has been the century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy, it does not follow that the twentieth must also be the century of Liberalism, Socialism and Democracy. Political doctrines pass; peoples remain. It is to be expected that this century may be that of authority, a century of the “Right,” a Fascist century. If the nineteenth was the century of the individual it may be expected that this one may be the century of “collectivism” and therefore the century of the State.... The doctrine

itself, therefore, must be, not words, but an act of life. Hence, the pragmatic veins in Fascism, its will to power, its will to be, its attitude in the face of the fact of “violence” and of its own courage.... 11. In the Fascist State the individual is not suppressed, but rather multiplied, just as in a regiment a soldier is not weakened but multiplied by the number of his comrades. The Fascist State organizes the nation, but it leaves sufficient scope to individuals; it has limited useless or harmful liberties and has preserved those that are essential. It cannot be the individual who decides in this matter, but only the State. 12. The Fascist State does not remain indifferent to the fact of religion in general and to that particular positive religion which is Italian Catholicism. The State has no theology, but it has an ethic.... The Fascist State does not create a “God” of its own, as Robespierre once, at the height of the Convention’s foolishness, wished to do; nor does it vainly seek, like Bolshevism, to expel religion from the minds of men. Fascism respects the God of the ascetics, of the saints, of the heroes, and also God as seen and prayed to by the simple and primitive heart of the people. 13. The Fascist State is a will to power and to government. In it the tradition of Rome is an idea that has force. In the doctrine of Fascism, Empire is not only a territorial, military or mercantile expression, but spiritual or moral. One can think of an empire, that is to say a nation that directly or indirectly leads other nations, without needing to conquer a single square kilometer of territory. For Fascism the tendency to Empire, that is to say, to the expansion of nations, is a manifestation of vitality; its opposite, staying at home, is a sign of decadence: peoples who rise or re-rise are imperialist, people who die are renunciatory. Fascism is the doctrine that is most fitted to represent the aims, the states of mind, of a people, like the Italian people, rising again after many centuries of abandonment of slavery to foreigners.... If every age has its own doctrine, it is apparent from a thousand signs that the doctrine of the present age is Fascism. That it is a doctrine of life is shown by the fact that it has resuscitated a faith. That this faith has conquered minds is proved by the fact that Fascism has had its dead and its martyrs. Fascism henceforward has in the world the universality of all of those doctrines which, by fulfilling themselves, have significance in the history of the human spirit. Benito Mussolini, “The Doctrine of Fascism,” in Carl Cohen, ed., Communism, Fascism and Democracy: The Theoretical Foundations (New York: Random House, 1962), 349--64.

15 What Are We to Do? Ignazio Silone Fontamara was written by Silone (1900-1978) in Davos, Switzerland, shortly after the author was told by a medical doctor in Rome that because of an incurable lung ailment, he did not have long to live. It is the story of a poor peasant community ravaged by poverty, the petite bourgeoisie, the bureaucracy of Rome, and fascist violence. The protagonist is not a single character but an entire social class. Silone refers to them as the cafoni—a term of contempt but that in his usage acquires its own dignity in the course of the narrative. This was Silone’s aim: until the word and the people achieved some semblance of humanity and dignity in the eyes of others, the problem of miseria (misery or pouerty) could not be solved. Fontamara recounts how the largely illiterate peasants are swindled out of their only source of water and terrorized by the fascist squadristi. When a Mystery Man appears among them urging them to organize and rebel, hope is generated. That hope is crushed by a brutal fascist reprisal that leaves most of the village dead. Here, several of the peasants are present at the founding of the first cafoni newspaper The refrain “What are we to do?” is an echo of a famous essay by Lenin. The story is recounted by those who bad escaped the massacre to another Fontamaresi (Silone) in exile. My son arrived just when about a dozen of us had gathered around a box and some other things that the Mystery Many had brought us for the purpose of publishing a cafone newspaper, actually the first cafone newspaper ever printed. On the box were the words DUPLICATING MACHINE. We had innocently put the box on Marietta’s table in the middle of the street and, as I said, about a dozen of us were discussing what sort of newspaper we were to make. It was a strange thing to be doing, though we didn’t realize it yet. Maria Grazia, who had the best handwriting and was to write the sheet, was there, and so

was Baldissera, who knew about grammar and apostrophes. So was Scarpone, to whom the Mystery Man had explained how the box worked. The first thing we discussed was the title to be given to the newspaper. Baldissera wanted the sort of thing they have in towns, like The Messenger, The Tribune, or something of that kind, but Scarpone, who had inherited Berardo’s ways, told him to shut up. “Ours is not to be an imitation newspaper. This is to be the first cafone newspaper ever published,” he announced firmly. Michele suggested a good title, The Truth, which meant a great deal, but Scarpone turned up his nose at it. “The Truth?” he exclaimed. “Who knows the truth?” “We don’t, but we want to,” Michele replied. “And when you’ve found it, what are you going to do with it?” said Scarpone. “Make soup?” That was his way of arguing. Losurdo also had a good idea; the title he suggested was Justice. “You must be out of your mind,” Scarpone said. “Justice has always been against us.” With us justice has always meant the carabinieri. Having to do with justice has always meant having to do with the carabinieri. Falling into the hands of justice has always meant falling into the hands of the carabinieri. So that was not a suitable title. “But I mean real justice,” Losurdo said angrily. “Justice that would be the same for everyone.” “That you’ll find in Paradise,” said Scarpone. What answer could there be to that? Marietta’s suggestion was The Cafoni’s Bugle. But no one took any notice of her. “What are we to do?” Scarpone said. “But we’ve got to decide on a title,” Marietta said. “Why don’t you suggest something?” “I have. It’s What Are We to Do?” We looked at one another in surprise. “But that’s not a title,” Baldissera objected. “That not a title. We want a proper title to put at the head of the newspaper, don’t you see? In beautiful handwriting, don’t you see?” “Well, then, write at the head of the newspaper in beautiful handwriting: What Are We to Do?” Scarpone replied. “And that will be your title.” “But that’s a ridiculous title,” Baldissera again objected. “If a copy of our newspaper gets to Rome, everyone who sees it will burst out laughing.”

Scarpone lost his temper. This was to be a cafone newspaper, the first cafone newspaper of all time. It was to be a handwritten newspaper, and what people might think of it in Rome was a matter of total indifference to him. Eventually Baldissera was persuaded, Scarpone’s proposal was accepted. While Maria Grazia began writing out the title, we went on to discuss the first article. Maria Grazia wrote with her head bent to one side, like a schoolgirl, and the whole thing seemed like a children’s game. It’s strange, I said to myself, it’s strange how many new things are happening all at once. Zompa said, “The first piece of news, you’ll all agree, must be this: they have killed Berardo Viola.” Scarpone agreed, but proposed an addition, “They have killed Berardo Viola, what are we to do?” “But ‘what are we to do?’ is already in the title,” Michele pointed out. “That’s not enough,” Scarpone replied. “It must be repeated, otherwise the title’s no good, and we had better drop it. ‘What are we to do?’ must be repeated in every article. They have taken away our water, what are we to do? Don’t you see? The priest refuses to bury our dead, what are we to do? They violate our women in the name of the law, what are we to do? Don Cir-costanza is a scoundrel, what are we to do?” At that we all saw Scarpone’s idea and agreed with it. There was another slight argument about Berardo’s name. Baldissera thought Viola should be spelled with two Ls, and Michele thought that one was enough. But Maria Grazia said she could write it in a way that left in doubt whether there was one L or two, and that settled the argument. When I realized that there was nothing else to discuss, I went off home to spend some time alone with my son, because I thought I had lost him but had found him again. Late that evening Scarpone brought me a parcel of thirty copies of the newspaper What Are We to Do? to distribute at San Giuseppe, where I knew a lot of people. Next day other Fontamaresi were to distribute it in other neighboring villages. Altogether five hundred copies had been made. When my wife saw these sheets, she made a grimace. “Now we are going to be just like Innocenzo La Legge, distributing sheets of paper,” she said. “They mention Berardo’s name, that’s the only reason,” I explained. “When strange things begin to happen, no one can stop them,” my wife replied. “You’re right, it’s not our job. But they mention Berardo’s name. That’s the only reason.” My wife’s family lives at San Giuseppe, and we had the idea of celebrating my son’s release

by going to San Giuseppe, all three of us. That was our salvation. We went there in the afternoon, and in half an hour I distributed the newspaper to everyone we met in the street. At about nine o’clock, after having supper and drinking a glass of wine with our relatives, we left to go back to Fontamara. When we were halfway, we heard some shots in the distance. “Which saint’s day is it?” asked my wife, wanting to know from which village the shots were coming. It was difficult to tell. San Luigi’s day was over and Santa Anna’s had not yet come. As we went on, the shots became more frequent. “Anyone would think they were coming from Fontamara,” I remarked. At that moment a carter from Manaforno, coming from the Fossa direction, passed by. “Hey, Fontamaresi,” he called out without stopping, “at Fontamara there’s war.” We went on. “War? What war?” we asked one another. “War between Fontamaresi? Impossible. War by the Contractor against Fontamara? Again? But why?” Every now and then the firing died down, but then started up again more vigorously than ever. As we went on, it became more and more obvious that it was coming from Fontamara and that the shots were rifle shots. “What are we to do?” we asked one another in dismay. That was Scarpone’s question: “What are we to do?” The question was easier to ask than to answer. Meanwhile we kept on our way. Just where the road to Fontamara and the road to Fossa meet, Pasquale Cipolla suddenly appeared. “Where are you going? To Fontamara? Are you mad?” he shouted, and hurried on in the direction of Fossa. We ran after him. “But what’s happening at Fontamara?” I shouted. “What’s all that firing?” “It’s war, it’s war,” Cipolla replied. “War against the cafoni, against the newspaper.” “And the others, what has happened to them?” I asked. “Those who could, fled. Those who could, escaped,” Cipolla replied without stopping. “Did Scarpone get away?” my son asked. “May his soul rest in peace,” Cipolla replied, making the sign of the cross. “And what about Venerdi Santo?”

“May his soul rest in peace,” Cipolla replied, again making the sign of the cross. “And Pilato?” I asked. “He went up into the mountains.” “And General Baldissera?” “May his soul rest in peace.” “Who else is dead?” In the distance we heard the sound of horses’ hooves approaching. It might have been the carabinieri from Pescina going to Fontamara, so we fled into the fields. We lost Pasquale Cipolla in the dark. We have had no news of him since. Nor have we had news of any of the others, of these who died or those who escaped, or of our house or of the land. Now we are here. The Mystery Man helped us get out of the country, and that is how we arrived here, abroad. But it’s obvious that we can’t stay here. What are we to do? After so much anguish and so much mourning, so many tears and so many tricks, so much hate and injustice and despair, what are we to do? Ignazio Silone, Fontamara; republished in The Abruzzo Trilogy, trans. Eric Mos-bacher, rev. Darina Silone, with foreword by Alexander Stille (South Royalton, Vt.: Steerforth Italia, 2000), 168-73. Copyright © 2000 by Darina Silone. Reprinted by permission of Steerforth Press. See also Maria Nicolai Paynter, Ignazio Silone: Beyond the Tragic Vision (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000); and Elizabeth Leake, The Reinvention of Ignazio Silone (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003).

16 Letters from Women The past three decades have seen new historical work on the role and fate of women under the fascist regime. Often the research of younger scholars and social historians, this work sheds much light on a previously neglected facet of life in Italy. The following five letters from women to Mussolini range in tone from supportive to critical to outright condemnation. They illustrate the wide range of opinion as well as the extraordinary courage and depredations suffered by the women of fascist Italy. Trieste December 1938 Your Excellency Mussolini, Shame! Shame on the scientists who have supposedly discovered the “true Italian race” and shame on he who has thought up the “provisions for the defense of the race” that You have promulgated. I am still incredulous and I grasp on to the hope that You have not realized the monsters that have been germinating in the thoughts and in the actions of those who, with terrible consequences, will painfully divide the great Italian family. No. I am not referring just to the brave undertakings of some young “Aryan” people of the GUF, who have interpreted the new provisions in their own manner, smearing tar on our insignias, hitting our young people, intimidating men (as happened the other day in front of the fish market and in Piazza Unità d’Italia) only because they are “dirty Jews.” But are these not the same “dirty Jews” who brought Trieste into Italy twenty years ago? Are they to be treated as enemies? But are they not the same people who in 1914 crossed the border to fight alongside You on the Carso while their families were languishing under the noose of the Austrians? But, besides this burning pain, there are still more silent punishments: those that You are inflicting on our children. So that You can’t say that you weren’t aware of what was happening: our sons, who wish only to study, are pointed out in every class, separated from their contemporaries, forced into a life of domestic seclusion. The teachers who chose the profession, who were considered

almost like priests of wisdom, now, because they were born Jewish, are forcibly removed from their students and deprived of their salary which they had always honestly earned. If You were a mother, as I am, how could You look Your children in the eyes in the evening; children who had been deprived of the most sacred right of reaching wisdom through study? If You were a father, as You are, and teacher, as You have been in the past, how would You feel to be deprived of the means of support for Your family and from the position from which You lovingly broke the bread of knowledge with Your young disciples? If You don’t understand this, You can be neither father, nor teacher, nor even leader of this poor country which rather than being itself, mirrors the black images that appear over there, beyond the Alps. What would You do, what would You do? Must I then bring my children to be baptized by the archbishop so as to hide from them their own identity? Or must I pass a bribe of a few thousand liras, which—besides—I don’t have, to the officers of the registry who, with a stroke of a pen in the civil register of the state, can make us “Aryan”? Or must we go? And where, if our house is here, our job is here, and our dead rest here in peace? So, Your Excellency Mussolini, what would You do, what would You do? I hope that in Your heart you will soon find an answer. That You ask yourself the right questions and return to the right path. Otherwise all the suffering borne by these innocent children of the Italian family will fall on Your head. May my mother’s heart, opened to You with so much sincerity, be heard. Dina M. Ghirlanda (Grosseto), 2 March 1941 His Excellency Mussolini Benito Head of Government I have the high honor to communicate to Your Excellency that my husband, fighting on the Albanian front, has already contributed his payment of blood for our beloved Patria. By glorious wounds suffered in combat in the days of last February. From the Ministry and the Federale of the province of Grosseto, I have accepted the news with stoic resignation worthy of the time in which we live.

Let’s wish that our brave and glorious soldiers and the skill of Your Directives bring us as soon as possible to the attainment of Our Deserved Victory. And thus crush once and for all our Number One enemy, the accursed, barbaric and uncivil English. Olga S., wife of N.S. Predappio [Mussolini’s hometown] 28 November 1941 Your Excellency, I, the undersigned, Dina P., a peasant from the Valeria farm, didn’t want to disturb You in this time of war and pain, but necessity defeats me, please excuse me: I find myself with six children all under thirteen years of age. And for Christmas I am due to give birth to my seventh child; I have four of them that go to school but who lack clothes and a lot of times I cannot send them because I don’t have anything to dress them in; no shoes, no suits of any kind, no money; please have pity. Your heart is always ready to help the poor; I can with true heart thank Your beloved bride Donna Rachele who in the past helped me to dress my children a little bit. I thank You with a sincere heart. With the sincerity of a mother, I wish You strong health; thanking You a second time. Win! Yours, Dina P. farmer daughter of Giovanna M. Trento 15 June 1940 To His Excellency Benito Mussolini Rome In Your May l6th speech to the comrades of Trento, You stated that in politics “sentiment has no place. Only self-interest exists in politics.” But You should well remember that the Italian

people have never let themselves be dragged along by vile self-interest. The Italian people fight for honor. Duce, the declaration of war against France is an ignoble action. A man of honor doesn’t kill a wounded nemesis. You will pass into history covered in infamy. You have gone against the conscience of Your people. They would have agreed to a fight against a German invasion, considering the French people as brothers. It is not to be denied that France has made her share of mistakes, but what about Germany? Because of the unimportant incident of the sanctions, You wish to drown twenty centuries of history? Impossible. Your ancestors have bestowed in our blood a hatred for the “gray hyenas.” We remain stupefied before Your inflammatory speech, dictated only by ambition. Also in the speech of May 16th You briefly mentioned with scorn “those people who pray for peace.” You don’t believe in the existence of God and You don’t give a damn about prayers, since in Italy only You have the power to choose war or peace. Go slowly. How long can Your hegemony last? You are powerful, but You are not immortal. Like the most miserable beggar, You too will also have to die. You have dared to challenge God. Unconscionable! He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword. The blood of so many innocents will be on You and on Your children. Insistent rumors circulate that France and England made You some offers so that Italy stay neutral. We don’t know if these rumors are true. From the press—defined ironically as “the voice of the Boss”—nothing can be learned. It trumpets deformed news, completely false. If that news is true, may God look after You! A revolution would break out against fascism, destroying it completely. It is also heard that our declaration of war is merely a facade to placate Germany. In truth, we are dealing with a peaceful taking of possession from France which we desire, of communal accord with France and England. Our war is so very infamous that today people don’t want to believe it. Whatever is the truth, only You can know it. We don’t want to know the business of State and we wash our hands of it. The responsibility of the war reverts entirely on You. Here is the “pulsing enthusiasm” with which Italian people has welcomed Your declaration of war. You have remained too aloft and You have never understood the aspirations of the people. In politics sentiments don’t exist? But do You believe that Italians are wood puppets without soul and without a brain? If You have suffocated the freedom of the press and of action, You have not prevented Italian people from feeling “sentiments.” I leave You to Your Fate. We will see the results.

Lina Romano Genoa 28 October 1942 Duce, I have lost my seven-year-old daughter in the bombings of last Thursday. Only after four days of digging did they find what was the body of my creatura. Those days of waiting I wouldn’t wish on the worst of human beings. In front of the rubble, petrified, I didn’t even hear the other bombings that followed in the days afterwards. You cannot know the torment of losing, at so tender an age, the only creatura that gave me reason to live. You have to end this war, as soon as possible. All the mothers who fear, who mourn, who cry and who suffer this torment without end ask You for this. This is not a war between soldiers: in the front line are we who are at home. What did a seven-year-old little girl have to do with the war? With England and America? Is it is possible that one can died like this, with terror in one’s heart and after having lived for months wandering among the shelters, suffering from the cold, grasping each other in the dark while the earth is trembling as if the end of the world was near? But don’t You realize that the lives that You have told us to put into the world are being sacrificed in this massacre that no longer has a name anymore? Isn’t Your conscience at all disturbed? Don’t you think about Your children and the world without hope that is gaping in front of everybody? Every feeling, even the most sacred, is marked by this terror that spreads and that cannot be contained: from the shelter of Porta Soprano there have been dozens of deaths because a panic seized those trying to enter and they were crushed in the confusion... the human avalanche swept by, tearing children from their mothers, passing even over the bodies of newborns, trying to find a place in the shelter. Those dead were killed by a fear that grips us even before they were killed by the bombs and that only the end of the war can heal. What can become of us if You force us to us to live in this barbarity? What will become of the separated families so cruelly decimated? Decide to end the war, Duce, because life for those who don’t die is worse than death. Enrica D. Caro Duce: Lettere di donne italiane a Mussolini, 1922-1943, preface by Camilla Cederna, trans. Stanislao G. Pugliese (Milan: Rizzoli, 1989), 34-35,

49-50, 145-46, 152-53; see also Victoria De Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).

17 Aphorisms Benito Mussolini Perhaps influenced by a superficial reading of Nietzsche when he was a young man, Mussolini liked to speak in aphorisms. They were often painted on public spaces such as the walls of buildings or train stations and reprinted in the fascist newspapers. Children would often be forced to recite them at school. Most often heard were “Mussolini ha sempre ragione!” (Mussolini is always right!) and “Credere! Obbedire! Combat-tere! ”(Believe! Obey! Fight!) Here are a few more that reveal much about the man and the regime he created. Although he strove for eloquence and grandeur, the aphorisms usually descend to banalities, bromides, and platitudes. “We are prepared to challenge, to fight, and to die so that the fruits of the Fascist Revolution are not wasted.” “We will march with a sure and Roman step toward infallible goals.” “He who is not with us is against us.” “Either fascism or anti-fascism.” “Bestir yourselves with me, collaborate with me so as to give the Italians a joyous, heroic and human meaning to life.” “May all factions perish so that the Italian nation be great and respected.” “A curse on those who would halt the destined march of a generation that has earned its privileges of nobility and its titles of grandeur in the trenches! We will not turn back!”

“For the cause of the fascist Revolution, we are prepared to live, prepared to fight and prepared to die.” “We wish that Italy be great, that it be secure and that it be feared!” “Fascism, consecrated by the blood of our Martyrs, is undefeated and invincible.” “One must be either on this side or that side.” “All power to Fascism!” “The flag of the Fascist Revolution has been entrusted to my hands.” “Fascism is the entire Italian people.” “Life is struggle, risk, tenacity.” “Fascist Italy, can—if necessary—bring the tricolor flag forward; lower it, never!” “When the canon booms, truly it is the voice of the Nation that thunders.” “To stop signifies to retreat.” “I will bring you ever higher, always higher.” “There is a single faith: the love of country; there is a single will: to make the Italian people great.” “We are penetrating into environments and bastions that appeared closed to our conquests: above all we are penetrating souls.” “Italy is Fascist and Fascism is Italy.” “My words come after the facts.” “We are a rising people.” “An entire century belongs to us.” “Either a precious friendship or an extremely harsh hostility.” “We are against the comfortable life.” “Institutions are renovated, the land is reclaimed, cities are founded.” “The fascist creed is heroic in its force of human will.” “The creed of the fascist is heroism; that of the bourgeois is egoism.” “The fascist will can be bent only by God; never by men or things.” “It is the plow that traces the furrow, but it is the sword that defends it. The plowshare and the blade are both tempered steel like the faith in our hearts.” “To those who would try to stop us with words or paper, we will respond with

the heroic motto of the first action squads and we will sally forth against anyone, of whatever political persuasion who tries to block our path.” “We advance unswervingly.” “He who has iron has bread; but when the iron is well-tempered he will probably find gold as well.” “We are the embalmers of a past; we are the anticipators of a future.” “A people who does not love to carry their own weapons ends by carrying the weapons of others.” “Roma doma” (Rome tames). “Italy has a single will, a hard soul and marches straight.” “While the canon thunders in so many parts of the world, to have illusions is folly, not to prepare is a crime. We will not delude ourselves and we will prepare ourselves.” “Borders traced in ink can be modified. It’s another thing when borders are traced by the hand of God and the blood of men.” “In the fascist milieu, precedents are not needed. We prefer to create them.” “No one has stopped us. No one will stop us.”

Benito Mussolini, Dizionario Mussoliniano: 1500 affermazione e definizioni del DUCE su 1000 argomenti, ed. Bruno Biancini, trans. Stanislao G. Pugliese (Milan: Hoepli, 1940), 90-95.

18 Operations against Ind ivid uals Gaetano Salvemini Born near Bari in the Mezzogiorno, Gaetano Salvemini (1873-1957) won a scholarship to study at the University of Florence. As a historian, he made his mark with important studies on medieval Florence, the French Revolution, and Giuseppe Mazzini, but he is best known for his tireless opposition to fascism. Although the Messina earthquake of 1908 killed his wife and,five children, and although he was arrested by the fascist regime and ultimately forced into exile, Salvemini never wavered in his scholarly and political work. He became known for his concretismo—an unwavering insistence on the practical and pragmatic nature of politics. He once remarked that if he had to choose between the “eagles of idealism ” or the “sparrows of empiricism, ” he would always choose the latter. A spiritual and intellectual guide for a younger generation of anti-fascists, Salvemini spent much of the fascist period in exile, first in London, then teaching in New York City and at Harvard University. From exile, be continued an unceasing polemic against the, fctscist regime. The large scale operations, by which the Fascists terrorize cities and whole districts, are only a small fraction of the “severe measures” by which the Party maintains itself in power. Giacomo Matteotti in his book, A Year of Fascist Domination, occupies forty-two octavo pages in setting out in summary form the list of assaults committed from November 1922 to October 1923: there are over 2,000 cases of murders, woundings more or less severe, beatings, forcible administration of castor oil, decrees of exile, illegal seizure and hurning of newspapers, wrecking of private houses and offices, etc. Among the operations having for their aim “the teaching of lessons” to individuals or special groups, particular interest attaches to the outrages committed against Members of Parliament or

candidates for elections. They not only show the sort of life that a Member or candidate belonging to the Opposition had to endure under Fascist rule, they also help us to discern the abundant vein of humour in the following words of the Fascist propagandist [Luigi Villari] in England:

Non Mollare! was one of the first underground anti-fascist newspapers. Printed in Florence, it became a focal point of the early resistance to the regime. It ceased publication after a series of violent and deadly attacks by the squadristi. (Courtesy Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.)

On November 1922, in answer to a complaint by Signor De Nicola, President of the Chamber, that many deputies had been forced by the Fascists to leave their constituencies, Mussolini assured him that orders had been issued for the immediate withdrawal of these bans of exile. One of the first Members who was taught the danger of withholding full and entire approval from the working of the Fascist regime, was Signor Misuri, a dissident Fascist. On the evening of May 29, 1923, he was very nearly cudgelled to death for having ventured to deliver a speech in the Chamber criticizing, not the “Duce” himself, but some of his most intimate coadjutors. My intention—Misuri relates in the Indicatore della Stampa of June 20, 1924—was to denounce all that I had been able to observe inside the Party. As a final gesture of deference and devotion towards Signor Mussolini I informed him through Signors Finzi and Buttafochi, of my intention. After seeing the Premier, Buttafochi came back and said to me, “The Premier says that he will have you arrested if you speak.” I replied: “In that case you may tell the Premier that the Constitution stands between him and me, and that I shall do my duty as a Member of Parliament.” As threats had failed, the well-known gang planned the assault on me. A few clays before, in expelling me from the Party, the Executive Council had threatened me with “severe sanctions,” as an official communiqué expressed it. Any new sanctions beyond expulsion could only take the form of illegal violence. The assault of which I was the victim was the work of a detachment of Fascists from Bologna led by the “Senior” Bonaccorsi, and including two men named Sansoni and Nobili, who had followed me step by step in the motor car usually stationed in the courtyard of the “Viminale.” On the evening of November 29, 1923, the Fascists invaded and wrecked the house of the ex-Prime Minister, Signor Nitti, in Rome. The Fascist Corriere Sabino, of November 30, gives the following account of the exploit: Yesterday at about 7 P.M., some 500 Fascists, not without daring, gathered in front of Signor Nitti’s house. Some hundreds of the most excited of them began to fire on the villa. Two compact groups attacked the railings. Some policemen ran up but were driven off by the crowd. One went to report to the Police Commissary. Meanwhile the Fascists broke into the building and smashed the windows on the ground floor with their sticks, still keeping up the firing. The

group which penetrated into the house sought in vain for Nitti. The Political Secretary of the Rome Fascio declared that the capital cannot tolerate the affront of Nitti’s presence, and that to-morrow Fascism all over Italy will learn the news that the days of combat are perhaps near for which all are already prepared and resolute. Signor Giovanni Amendola, an ex-Minister (in England he would have been a follower of Mr. Baldwin) received three successive “lessons.” The first was administered at 10 A.M. on December 26, 1923, in one of the most frequented streets of Rome, the Via Francesco Crispi. Five men who had been following him in a motor car attacked him with bludgeons from behind, striking him on the face, head, and neck until he fell insensible. They then re-entered the car and made off unhindered. The assault was the work of two Militia officers, an exMilitia man who had been discharged for criminal offenses, and two others, one of whom had already killed a newspaper seller in November of the same year and had been left at large despite this murder. Amendola received a second “lesson” on April 7, 1925, when he dared the Fascists by taking part in a political meeting in Rome. After the meeting he and his friend were attacked three times with cudgels. Amendola escaped unhurt, but several of his friends had to go to a hospital. The third “lesson” was administered to him on July 20, 1925. He had gone for a cure to the baths at Montecatini. On the news of his arrival, a thousand Fascists gathered from all the villages around, laid siege to his hotel, demanding that he should leave at once. He was obliged to leave by motor car. In the dead of night a gang of Fascists who had been lying in wait for the car attacked it at Serravalle, on the road from Montecatini to Pistoia. They struck Amendola savagely on the head, face, hands, arms, and breast. This time the “lesson” had the desired effect. Amendola never recovered. After two operations necessitated by his injuries he died on April 6, 1926. The doctors declared the cause of his death to be “a degeneration of the left hemi-thorax consequent upon the violent blows in July 1925.” The following day Miss Gibson’s attempt on Mussolini’s life took place, and among other reprisals, the premises of Amendola’s paper, Il Mondo, and his house in Rome, were sacked. After having sacked Il Mondo, the Fascists went to the Palazzo Chigi, Mussolini’s official residence, and made a demonstration. On the eve of Miss Gibson’s attempt on Mussolini, another Member of Parliament, Modigliani, was assaulted for the third time and badly beaten. After the attempt (April 7, 1926) his flat in Rome was invaded. He was in bed recovering from his injuries, but escaped with his wife (who had also twice suffered injuries at the hands of the Fascists) over the roof of an adjoining house. The number of Members of Parliament who have been beaten and wounded is about fifty. The outrage of which Signor Forni, a candidate for Parliament was a victim, on March 12, 1924, is described by the Public Prosecutor of Milan in the request which he presented to

Parliament in December 1924 for leave to prosecute the Deputy Giunta, the latter in his function as General Secretary to the Fascist Party having given orders for the operations: On the afternoon of March 12, 1924, during the electioneering campaign, a group of about twenty persons armed with clubs surrounded Captain Cesare Forni and Signor Guido Giroldi, an accountant, at the exit of the Central Station at Milan on the arrival side. They had just arrived from Vigevano with Signor Raimondo Sala, ex-Mayor of Alessandria. Giroldi was wounded in the head, his left arm fractured. Captain Forni received many blows, one of the left side of the head with injury to the mastoidal gland and another on the upper lip. This assault, which was clearly premeditated, and which was beyond doubt essentially political in character, might have had the gravest consequences, especially for Captain Forni, against whom it was particularly aimed, as one of the principal representatives of the dissident Fascists of Lomellina, but the Captain’s exceptional physical strength enabled him to put up a vigorous defense against his assailants. Another candidate, Antonio Piccinini, had not the same strength to resist; he was weakly and in poor health. The following account of the crime of which he was the victim is taken from the judge’s sentence committing the accused culprits to the Assizes: On February 28, 1924, about 8:30 P.M. while Piccinini was at home showing a picture book to his two little daughters, one nine, and the other two years old and explaining it to them, there was a knock at the door. A young man of about 19 came in; he was of decent appearance, but had his hat pulled over his eyes. He asked Piccinini on behalf of Signor Carboni to come out with him. Piccinini said that he had nothing to do with Carboni. The young man insisted with some heat, and finally ordered Piccinini to come. Piccinini’s wife and little daughters grew alarmed and burst into tears. “May I at least know where you are taking me?” asked Piccinini, when he had put his coat on. “Come along, come along, no scenes,” replied the unknown man, seizing his arms and dragging him out. In the broad avenue leading towards Reggio Ciano station there were some revolver shots, a last cry for pity, and then silence. The corpse was not discovered till 4 A.M. next morning. The post-mortem showed that three of the four shots fired had struck the victim. Among the most recent outrages, I will mention only one, reported by the Catholic proFascist paper Italia, of Mantua (Sept. 23, 1926).

While the school-master, Anselmo Cessi (aged 50), president of the Mantuan branch of the “Nicolô Tomaseo,” was walking along a lonely road at Castelgoffredo, accompanied by his wife and children, three unknown persons, evidently lying in wait for him, attacked him violently with cudgels. His wife began to call for help, protesting against the aggressors. The latter, producing their revolvers, emptied them at close range into the unfortunate schoolmaster, who was instantly killed. The three unknown persons are known by all in Mantua, and are Fascists. A book of 400 pages would be necessary, in order to enumerate, in telegraphic style, all the outrages which were committed, in Italy, from November 1922, to December 1926, at the time of handing over the manuscript of this book to the publishers. The acts of violence during the election campaign of 1924 alone fill a book of 213 pages. In face of facts of this kind it may well be asked how there can exist in the world people so ill-informed or so fanatical as to affirm that in Italy “in the present state of affairs life and property are safe and one can go about one’s business or one’s pleasure without let or hindrance” (Morning Post, April 26, 1926). When it is said that there is no disorder in Italy under the Fascist Government, the statement is a half truth which is worse than the blackest lie. To-day there are no longer disorders of the kind provoked by the “Bolshevists” in 1919 and 1920. There is no longer the disorder of the civil war of 1921 and 1922. But there are disorders of a new kind: beatings, woundings, killings, perpetrated by the members of the Party in power on their opponents. Gaetano Salvemini, The Fascist Dictatorship in Italy (New York: Fertig, 1967; originally published in 1927), 155-62; see also Charles Killinger, Gaetano Salvemini: A Biography (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002).

19 We Have No Need Pope Pius XI Achille Ratti served as archbishop of Milan before his election as Pope Pius XI in 1922, allowing the fascist flag to fly from the Duomo in that city. But as the totalitarian aspirations of the regime became more apparent, Pius XI found himself criticizing the new government. Fences were mended in 1929 with the signing of the Lateran Accords, but antagonist persisted. Matters came to a head almost immediately after the signing of the Lateran Accords. Non Abbiamo Bisogno (We Have No Need) was an encyclical promulgated by Pope Pius XI on 29 June 1931. In it, the pope sought to protect the prerogatives of Catholic Action and the Catholic Church’s role in educating the youth of Italy. It also explicitly challenges the claims of the fascist state and the ideas of totalitarianism. Venerable Brethren, Health and Apostolic Benediction. We do not need to acquaint you, Venerable Brethren, with the events which have recently occurred in this Our Episcopal city of Rome, and throughout Italy, that is to say, in the very territory of which We are Primate—events which have had such a wide and deep repercussion especially in all the dioceses of Italy and throughout the Catholic world. These occurrences can be summarized in very few and very sad words. An attempt has been made to strike a mortal blow at that which was and always will be dearest to Our heart as Father and as Shepherd of Souls; and We can—indeed We must—add that “the way in which it has been done offends Us still more.” ... 2. In the presence and under the pressure of these events, We feel the need and the duty of turning to you, Venerable Brethren, and of, so to speak, visiting each one of you in spirit; first, to discharge Our urgent duty of fraternal gratitude, and, second, to satisfy another duty equally grave and urgent. We mean the duty of defending truth and justice in a matter which, inasmuch as it affects vital interests and rights of Holy Mother Church, concerns all and every one of

you, Venerable Brethren, whom the Holy Ghost has called to govern the Church in union with Ourselves. In the third place We wish to tell you of Our anxieties for the future. Fourth, We would lay before you the conclusions and reflections forced upon Us by these events; and, finally, We invite you to share Our hopes and to pray with Us and with the Catholic world that they may be fulfilled.... 5. For all these consolations, after God, it is you We thank, Venerable Brethren, you to whom We can say, as Jesus Christ said to your predecessors, the Apostles: “And you are they who have continued with Me in My temptations” (Luke xxii, 28). And in expressing Our gratitude to you, we wish also to perform the duty, most sweet to Our paternal heart, of thanking those multitudes of good and worthy children, who separately and collectively, as individuals and as members of various organizations and associations (especially the Associations of Catholic Action and of Catholic Youth), have sent Us so many and such affectionate tributes of devotion and sympathy, and of generous and practical conformity with Our directions and Our desires. It has been for us an exquisite satisfaction to see the Catholic Action organizations of all countries, both near and far, united round the common Father, inspired by a single spirit of faith, of filial sorrow and of generous impulses, all expressing their astonishment and grief in seeing Catholic Action societies persecuted and assailed here, in the very center of the Apostolic Hierarchy, where its raison d’etre is strongest. Here in Italy, as in all parts of the world where Catholic Action exists, Catholic Action is true to its solemn and authentic definition. Obeying Our watchful and assiduous instructions (which you, Venerable Brethren, have so largely seconded), it does not wish to be nor can be anything other than “the participation and the collaboration of the laity with the Apostolic Hierarchy.” ... 7. And to you, Bishops of each and every diocese in this dear Italy, We owe gratitude for the consolations which you have nobly vied with one another in giving Us by your letters which you lavished upon us during the entire month just ended, and especially by your telegrams, so eloquent and so affectionate, on the feast-day of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. But We, in Our own turn, must send you condolences on account of what each one of you has suffered in seeing gardens of souls which the Holy Ghost has entrusted to your care and which you had tended with such loving zeal, suddenly swept by a devastating tempest. Your hearts, Venerable Brethren, immediately turned to Our own, to suffer with us in Our afflictions; because you perceived that Our heart was as a center in which all your suffering hearts met and converged and joined. You have manifested this sentiment to Us in clear, unmistakable and affectionate ways, for which We thank you all, from the depths of Our heart. Particularly appreciative are We of the unanimous and most satisfactory and convincing proofs which you have brought to Us that the Italian Catholic Action societies, especially the Catholic Youth Associations, have remained docile and faithful to Our instructions and yours in refraining absolutely from any and every kind of party-political activity. And together with you, We express Our thanks to all your priests, to the members of religious communities, and to your laity, who have united themselves with you in so fine a showing of faith and filial piety. And in a special way We thank your Catholic Associations and chiefly the organizations of the young, down through all their groups, even to the smallest boys and girls. The smaller they are the dearer they are, and it is in their prayers that We confidently repose our trust....

9. Having thus satisfied the debt of gratitude for the consolations which We have received in Our affliction, We must now satisfy also that obligation which Our Apostolic Ministry imposes on Us as a debt to truth and justice. 10. Already on several occasions, Venerable Brethren, in the most solemn and explicit manner and assuming entire responsibility for what We were saying, We have protested against the campaign of false and unjust accusations which preceded the disbanding of the Associations of the young people and of the University students affiliated to Catholic Action. It was a disbanding which was carried out in such a way and by such methods as to give the impression that action was being taken against a vast and dangerous organization of criminals, although the young men and young women involved are certainly some of the best among the good, concerning whom We are happy and paternally proud to pay tribute still once more. It is noteworthy that even among the officers of the law charged to carry out these orders of suppression, there were many who were ill at ease and showed by their expressions and courtesies that they were almost asking pardon for obeying peremptory orders. We have appreciated the delicate feelings of these officers and We have reserved for them a special blessing. 11. But, in sad contrast with the manner of acting of these officials, how many acts of brutality and of violence there have been, even to the striking of blows and the drawing of blood! How many insults in the press, how many injurious words and acts against things and persons not excluding Ourself, have preceded, accompanied and followed the carrying into effect of this lightning-like police-order which in many instances either through ignorance or malicious zeal, was extended to include associations and organizations not contemplated in the superior orders, such as the oratories of the little ones and the sodalities of the Children of Mary. And all this sad accompaniment of in-everences and of violences took place in the presence of and with the participation of members of a political party, some of whom were in uniform, and were carried into effect with such a unison of action throughout all Italy and with such a passive acquiescence on the part of the civil authorities and the police as to make one necessarily suspect that some supreme authority had issued an instruction. It is easy to admit, and it was equally easy to have foreseen, that the limits of these directions could and would have, almost necessarily, been exceeded. We must need refer to these painful and distasteful things, because there has been an attempt made to have the public and the world at large believe that the disbanding of the associations which are so dear to Us took place without incidents and almost as if it were a normal proceeding. 12. But there have been other attacks on truth and justice on a larger scale. The inventions, falsehoods and real calumnies diffused by the hostile press of the [Fascist] party, which is the only press which is free to say and to dare to say anything and is often ordered or almost ordered what it must say, were largely summarized in a message which was cautiously characterized as unofficial and yet was broadcast to the general public by the most powerful means of diffusion which exist at present. 13. The history of the documents prepared not in the service of truth, but in contempt of truth and of justice is a long and sad story. But we must affirm, with deep dismay, that in Our many

years of active life as a librarian We have rarely seen an article so tendentious and so contrary to truth and justice in its references to this Holy See, to Italian Catholic Action, and particularly to the Associations which have been so harshly treated. If We should be silent and if We should not contradict these things—that is to say if We should permit them to be believed —We should be much more unworthy than We already are to occupy this august Apostolic chair; We should be unworthy of the filial and generous devotion which has always consoled Us and now more than ever consoles Us, that devotion of our dear children of Catholic Action, and especially of those dear sons and dear daughters—and, thanks be to God, they are numerous—who, because of religious loyalty to Our invitations and directions, have suffered so much and are still suffering, thereby the more greatly honouring the school in which they have been reared and honouring also their Divine Master and His unworthy Vicar. They have borne such glorious witness by their Christian conduct, even in the face of threats and of violences that there is no doubt on which side real dignity of character, true strength of mind, real courage, and education are displayed. www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/_encyclicals/documents/hf_pxi_enc_29061931_non-abbiamo-bisogno_en.html; see also Richard A. Webster, The Cross and the Fasces: Christian Democracy and Fascism in Italy (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1960); Richard J. Wolff, Between Pope and Duce: Catholic Students in Fascist Italy (New York: Lang, 1990); and Jay P. Corrin, Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democracy (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002).

20 The Story of My Death Lauro de Bosis Although he completed a degree in chemistry, Lauro de Bosis (1901-1931) was a young romantic poet from Rome who had spent time in the United States. Having translated works from Greek and English into Italian, de Bosis was fascinated by the tragic hero and quickly became disillusioned with fascism. Believing that only an audacious gesture would bestir the Italians to throw off the yoke of dictatorship, on 3 October 1931, de Bosis flew a plane over Rome, dropping leaflets urging the Italians to rebel and reclaim their, freedoms. The act had an electric—although temporary—effect and de Bosis and his plane were lost at sea. Foreseeing this outcome, he left behind this haunting essay that was published in many of the major papers of Europe and the United States. In his memory, the poet Ruth Draper established the Lauro de Bosis Chair in Italian Civilization at Harvard University, where de Bosis had taught Italian. 2 October 1931 Tomorrow at three o‘clock in a meadow on the Côte d’Azur, I have an appointment with Pegasus. Pegasus—my airplane’s name—has a red body and white wings; although it is as strong as eighty horses, it is as slim as a swallow. Drunk with fuel, it can leap into the sky like its ancient brother, but if it wants, at night, it knows how to glide through the air like a ghost. I found it in the Hercynian Forest and its former master is going to bring it to me on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea, truly believing that it will serve the leisure hours of an idle young Englishman. My bad accent has not awakened his suspicions: may he forgive my ruse! But we are not going to chase imaginary monsters, rather carry a message of freedom to an

enslaved people across the sea. Dropping figures of speech (necessary to hide my plane’s origins), we are going to Rome to spread far and wide these words of liberty which, for seven years, have been forbidden like a crime. And with good reason, because were they permitted, they would have shaken off the tyranny of Fascism within hours. All governments on earth, even Afghanistan and Turkey, allow their subjects some measure of liberty, more or less. Fascism alone, in order to defend itself, must annihilate thought. One cannot blame it for punishing faith in freedom and loyalty to the Italian Constitution more severely than parricide: that is its sole means of surviving. One cannot blame it for having deported thousands of citizens without trial, nor having given out in four years seven thousand years of imprisonment: how could it dominate a free people, if it wasn’t terrorizing them with its black garrison of three thousand hired assassins [Blackshirts]? Fascism has no choice. To agree with it, one is forced to state with its apostle Mussolini, “Liberty is a rotten carcass.” To continue it, one must approve the murder of Matteotti, and the payments to his murderers, the destruction of every Italian newspaper, the plundering of Croce’s house, the millions spent on spies and double agents, in short, the sword of Damocles suspended over the head of every citizen. Yes, I know that the Austrians in 1850, the Bourbons and other Italian tyrants never went so far; they never deported persons without trial, all their sentences didn’t approach the number of seven thousand years of imprisonment in four years, and above all, they never enrolled in their army the sons of liberals, as Fascism does, snatching children from every family (liberal or socialist) from the age of eight, to put them in uniforms of executioners and give them a barbarous, warlike education. “Love the rifle, adore the machine gun, and don’t forget the dagger,” Mussolini wrote in an article for children. One cannot admire Fascism and deplore its excesses. It can exist only because of its excesses. Its excesses are its logic. It is Fascist logic that exalts paid murderers and slaps Toscanini in the face. The murder of Matteotti, it’s been said, wasn’t an error; from the Fascist point of view, it was a stroke of genius. Fascism is wrong, it’s been said, to torture prisoners to extort confessions; but it cannot live without doing so. The foreign press must understand that. It’s not possible to wish for a peaceful and humane Fascism without its total liquidation. Fascism has understood this and, after seven years, Italy has become a great prison where children are taught to love their chains and pity those who are free. Young people of twenty cannot remember any other atmosphere. Matteotti’s name is almost unknown to them. Since the age of thirteen, they’ve been made to learn that men have no rights, except those that the State has the goodness to bestow on them, at its whim. Many believe it. The myth that Mussolini has saved Italy from bolshevism is accepted without dispute. But it must not be believed that Italy has been fooled. Proof that it is deeply anti-Fascist by a very large majority is evident by the regime’s fear of all whispering and from the ferocity with which it punishes the least expression of free thought. Strong governments don’t need to resort to such things. In June 1930, I began to circulate bi-monthly letters, strictly constitutional in character, about the need that all men of [lawful] order be united for the day of Fascism’s fall. Since Fascism seems to have adopted “After me the deluge,” the initiative was most opportune, and in effect, the letters, according to the “snowball” principle, began to circulate by the thousands. For five months, I was able to carry on this work entirely by myself, sending every two weeks

six hundred letters signed “The National Alliance,” asking recipients to make six copies. Unfortunately, in December, during a short trip that I had had to take abroad, the police arrested two friends who had agreed to mail letters in my absence. They underwent torture, [and] were condemned to fifteen years in prison. One of them, Mario Vinciguerra, one of Italy’s best writers, a critic of art and literature, although ill, was left all night entirely naked (a December night) on the roof of police headquarters. Afterward, he received so many blows that he is completely deaf in one ear. They have thrown him in a cell of two meters [six feet] square, where there was no chair to sit on, and where, each morning, even the bed was removed. After protests from foreign journalists and prominent English and American politicians, his conditions were improved. Mussolini even went so far as to offer to release them both, if they would write a letter of submission, but they refused. The day I read the news of my friends’ arrest, I was just about to cross the frontier to Italy. My first instinct was naturally to return to Rome to share equally in their fate but I realized that a soldier’s duty is not to give himself up to the hands of the enemy, but to continue the struggle to the end. I immediately decided to go to Rome, not to surrender, but to advance the work of the Alliance by throwing out four hundred thousand letters from the air, and then, either fall in combat or return to my base to prepare for other strikes. The sky of Rome had never been penetrated by enemy airplanes. I would be the first—I said to myself—and at once I began to prepare for the job. It wasn’t easy, because, for a poet, it’s always difficult even to earn a living, and if exiled as well, in a year of the [economic] crisis to top the luck, it’s not surprising if he very quickly descends to the lowest rungs of Bohemian life. And then, I didn’t even know how to ride a motorcycle, not to mention a plane! I began by working as the concierge at the Hotel Victor Emmanuel III, rue de Ponthieu. My republican friends said that I was being punished where I had gone wrong! To tell the truth, I wasn’t only concierge, but bookkeeper and telephone operator. Sometimes three or four bells rang at once and I would shout up the stairs in a stentorian voice. “Irma, double the butter for 35!” It wasn’t much preparation for my raid on Rome; however, besides keeping the baker’s accounts and the clients’ receipts, I was writing a message to the King and studying a map of the Tyrrhenian Sea. The rest of my preparations is the most interesting side of the story, but unfortunately it must remain secret. In May, I made my first solo flight in a Farman machine, near Versailles. Then, learning that my secret was known to the Fascists, I disappeared and surfaced under another name in England. On 13 July [12 July], I left Cannes in an English biplane, carrying with me 80 kilos [177 pounds] of tracts. Since I had done only five hours of solo time, I went alone in order not to risk the life of a friend. Unfortunately, an accident cut short my effort on the coast of Corsica, and I had to save myself, leaving my plane in a field. My secret was now unveiled. In Italy they had no trouble knowing who the mysterious pilot was. English and French police began searching for me with a haste that flattered me: they even disagreed about my picture. I ask their pardon for the bother I’ve caused them. The worst was that now I couldn’t count on surprise, my greatest chance of success. Even so, Rome became for me like Cape Horn for the Flying Dutchman: living or dead, I swore to get there. My death (however undesired by me personally who has so many things to achieve) could only add to the success of the flight. Since the dangers are all in the return, it will happen

only after delivering my 400,000 letters, which will [then] be only the better received! After all, it’s a question of giving a small example of civic spirit and to bring to the attention of my fellow citizens the unlawfulness of their situation. I am convinced that Fascism will not end until twenty young people sacrifice their lives to spur the spirit of the Italians. In the Risorgimento, while there were thousands of youth ready to give their lives, today there are very few. Why? It’s not that their courage or faith are less than those of their fathers. It’s that no one takes Fascism seriously. Everyone, beginning with its leaders, expects a quick end, and it seems out of proportion to give one’s life in order to end something that is going to collapse on its own. This is a mistake. It is necessary to die. I hope that after me many others will follow and finally succeed in stirring public opinion. It remains only to give the text of my three [four] messages. In the first—to the King—I’ve tried to interpret the sentiments of the mass of my people by making an abstract of my sentiment. I believe that a republican as well as a monarchist would be equally able to subscribe to it. We are only posing a quandary [question]: For liberty or against it[?]. The King’s grandfather [Carlo Alberto I, King of Sardinia and Piedmont], after the most terrible defeat in the history of Italy [the Battle of Novaro in 1849], resisted the Austrian marshal [General Josef Radetzky], who wanted to force him to abrogate the constitution. Does he [the King], after the greatest victory in the history of Italy (the liberal victory), really wish to let the last remnant of the constitution perish without a single gesture? Besides my letters, I am going to throw out several copies of a magnificent book by Bolton King: Fascism in Italy [in Italian]. As one throws bread on a starving village, on Rome one must throw history books. After having flown over Corsica and the island of Monte-Cristo at 4,000 meters [13,120 feet], I will arrive over Rome about eight o’clock, after having glided the last twenty kilometers [12.4 miles]. Although I have done only seven-and-a-half hours of solo flight, if I go down, it will not be from lack of experience. My plane only does 150 kilometers per hour, and those of Mussolini do 300. He has 900 of them, and they have all been ordered to machine gun down suspicious planes whatever the cost. However little I may be known, they must know that after my first try, I have not given up. If my friend Balbo has done his duty, they are there now waiting for me. So much the better: I will be worth more dead than alive. Lauro de Bosis Jean McClure Mudge, The Poet and the Dictator: Lauro de Bosis Resists Fascism in Italy and America (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002), 181-83. Reprinted by permission of Greenwood Publishing Group.

21 The Basic Features of the Fascist Dictatorship Palmiro Togliatti Palnairo Togliatti (1893-1964) was, with Antonio Gramsci and others, a rounding mernber of the Italian Communist Party in January 1921. He fled to Russia after the fascists came to power and became a member of the Third International. A shrewd tactician and wily politician, he managed to survive Stalin’s purges while mapping out some unorthodox theories. This is the first in a series of lectures given by Togliatti to Italian workers attending a Communist Party school in Moscow in 1935. Although he obliquely refers here to the standard theory of social fascism (criticizing the non-Marxist, leftist political parties, especially social democracy and Justice and Liberty), in 1935 he advocated a united front of all political parties to defeat fascism. Before beginning our course, I want to say a few words on the term “adversaries” to keep some of you from making a false interpretation of this term, a false interpretation that could lead to political errors. When we speak of “adversaries” we do not have in mind the masses enrolled in the fascist, social-democratic and Catholic organizations. Our adversaries are the fascist, socialdemocratic and Catholic organizations. But the masses belonging to them are not our adversaries; they are masses of workers whom we must make every effort to win over. Let’s get on with our subject: fascism. What is fascism? What is the most complete definition that has been given of it? The most complete definition of fascism was given by the 13th meeting of the Enlarged Executive of the Communist International and is as follows: “Fascism is the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic, most imperialist elements of finance capital.” Fascism has not always been defined this way. Diverse, often erroneous definitions have been given of fascism at diverse stages and at different times. It would be interesting (and it’s a job I advise you to undertake) to study the diverse definitions we have given of fascism at

various stages. At the Fourth World Congress, for example, Clara Zetkin delivered a speech on fascism that was almost entirely dedicated to pointing out its petty-bourgeois character. Bordiga, instead, insisted on seeing no difference whatever between bourgeois democracy and fascist dictatorship, making them appear almost like the same thing, saying that between these two forms of bourgeois government there is a kind of rotation, of alternation. These speeches lacked an effort to unite, to connect two elements; the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the movement of the petty-bourgeois masses. From the theoretical point of view, what is hard is to fully grasp the link between these two elements. Yet this link must be understood. If one stops at the first element, one does not see, one loses sight of the main line of fascism’s historical development and its class content; if one stops at the second element, one loses sight of the prospects. This is an error social democracy committed. Until a short time ago, social democracy denied everything we said about fascism, regarding it as a return to medieval forms, as a degeneration of bourgeois society. Social democracy based these definitions exclusively on the petty-bourgeois mass character that fascism had actually assumed. But the movement of the masses isn’t the same in every country. Not even the dictatorship is the same in every country. This is why I must forewarn you of an error that is easily made. Do not think that what is true for Italy must also be true, must hold, for every other country. Fascism can take different forms in different countries. The masses of different countries have different forms of organization too. And we must also bear in mind the period of which we are speaking. Fascism assumes different aspects at different times in the same country. Hence, we must consider two elements. We have already seen the most complete definition of fascism: “Fascism is the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic, most imperialist elements of finance capital.” What does this mean? And why, at this precise moment, at this stage of historical development, are we confronted with this form, that is to say with the open, undisguised dictatorship of the most reactionary and most chauvinistic strata of the bourgeoisie? It is necessary to speak of this because not everyone is clear on this problem. I encountered a comrade whose head was so filled with this definition that he was astonished to learn that one of Gramsci’s articles said that every state is a dictatorship. Clearly, bourgeois democracy and dictatorship cannot be set in contrapo-sition. Every democracy is a dictatorship. Let us see what position the German Social Democrats took in defining fascism. They said fascism wrests power from the big bourgeoisie and passes it to the petty bourgeoisie, which then uses it against the former. You can also find this position in all the Italian Social Democratic writers: Turati, Treves, etc. From this position they derived their strategy, according to which the struggle against fascism will be waged by all the social strata, etc. This is how they evaded the problem of the proletariat’s function in the struggle against fascism.

But let’s come up in time. In 1932 in Germany, a number of opposition currents, including fringe groups in the Communist Party, asserted that fascism installs the dictatorship of the petty bourgeoisie on the big bourgeoisie. This was an incorrect assumption from which an incorrect political orientation inevitably was derived. It can be found in all the writings of the “Rightwingers.” In this connection, I also want to put you on guard against another definition. Watch out when you hear fascism spoken of as “Bonapartism.” This proposition, which is Trotskyism’s warhorse, is drawn from some statements by Marx (in The 18th Brumaire, etc.) and Engels; but Marx and Engels’ analyses, valid at the time for that era of capitalism’s development, became incorrect when mechanically applied today, in the age of imperialism. What follows from this definition of fascism as “Bonapartism”? What stems from it is the conclusion that it isn’t the bourgeoisie that is in command, but Mussolini and the generals, who wrested power form the bourgeoisie too. Remember the way Trotsky defined the Brüning government: “a Bonapartist government.” The Trotskyites have always had this conception of fascism. What is the root? Its root is the disavowal of the definition of fascism as the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Why has fascism, the open dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, arisen today, precisely in this period? You can find the answer in Lenin himself; you should look for it in his works on imperialism. You can’t know what fascism is if you don’t know imperialism. You know the economic features of imperialism. You know the definition Lenin gives. Imperialism is characterized by: (1) the concentration of production and capital, the formation of monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of finance capital, of a financial oligarchy; (3) the great importance acquired by the export of capital; (4) the rise of international capitalist monopolies, and, lastly, the repartitioning of the world among the great capitalist powers, which can now be viewed as complete. These are the features of imperialism. Based on them, there is a tendency of all the bourgeoisie’s political institutions to undergo a reactionary transformation. This, too, you will find in Lenin. There is a tendency to make these institutions reactionary, and this tendency appears in its most coherent forms with fascism. Why? Because, given the class relations and the capitalists’ need to safeguard their profits, the bourgeoisie must find forms with which to exert heavy pressure on the workers. Furthermore, the monopolies, that is to say the bourgeoisie’s leading forces, reach their highest degree of concentration, and the old forms of rule become impediments to their expansion. The bourgeoisie must turn against what it itself created, because what once was a factor of its development today has become an obstacle to the preservation of capitalist society. This is why the bourgeoisie must turn reactionary and resort to fascism. At this point I must caution you against another error: schematism. You must be careful not to consider the transition from bourgeois democracy to fascism fatal and inevitable. Why? Because imperialism does not necessarily have to give birth to the fascist dictatorship. Let’s look at some practical example. England, for instance, is a great imperialist state in which

there is a democratic parliamentary regime (although here, too, it cannot be said that reactionary features are not present). Take France, the United States, etc. In these countries you will find tendencies toward the fascist form of society, but the parliamentary forms still exist. This tendency toward the fascist form of government is present everywhere, but this still does not mean fascism must perforce be arrived at everywhere. If we were to argue a similar proposition, we would be making a schematic error, affirming as true that which does not exist in reality; and at the same time, we would be making a gross political error inasmuch as we would fail to see that the probabilities of establishing a fascist dictatorship depend on the degree of the fighting spirit of the working class and its ability to defend the democratic institutions. When the proletariat is opposed, it’s hard to overthrow these institutions. This struggle to defend the democratic institutions broadens and becomes the struggle for power. This is the first element to spell out in defining fascism. The second element consists in the nature of fascism’s mass organizations. The term fascism is often used imprecisely as a synonym for reaction, terror, etc. This is incorrect. Fascism does not denote only the struggle against bourgeois democracy; we cannot use this expression when we are confronted with that struggle alone. We must use it only when the fight against the working class develops on a new mass base with a petty-bourgeois character, as we can see in Germany, Italy, France, England—anywhere a typical fascism exists. Hence, the fascist dictatorship endeavors to possess a mass movement by organizing the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. It is very difficult to connect these two movements. It is very difficult not to stress one to the detriment of the other. For example, when Italian fascism was developing, before the March on Rome, the Party ignored this important problem: to keep the big bourgeoisie from winning over the discontented petty-bourgeois masses. At the time, these masses were made up of exservicemen, of several strata of poor peasants on the way to becoming wealthy, and a whole mass of misfits created by the war. We didn’t understand that there was an Italian social phenomenon underlying all this; we didn’t see the deep-going social causes determining it; we didn’t understand that the exservicemen, the misfits, were not isolated individuals but a mass, and represented a phenomenon having class aspects; we didn’t understand that we could not simply tell them to go to the devil! Thus, for example, having returned home, the misfits, who had exercised command during the war, wanted to continue to give orders, criticized the existing order and raised a whole series of problems that we should have taken into consideration. Our job was to win over a part of this mass and neutralize the other, thereby preventing it from becoming a mass maneuvered by the bourgeoisie. We neglected these tasks. This was one of our errors, an error that has been repeated elsewhere as well: to overlook the shift of the intermediate strata and the creation of trends in the petty bourgeoisie that the bourgeoisie can use against the working class.

Another error of ours was not to always stress sufficiently the fascist dictatorship’s class character. We pointed to capitalism’s weakness as the reason for the fascist dictatorship. A speech by Bordiga strongly emphasized the role of the weakest elements of capitalism—the rural bourgeoisie—in creating fascism. From this premise we deduced that fascism is a regime characteristic of countries with a weak capitalist economy. This error is explained in part by the fact that we were the first to have to cope with fascism. Later, we saw how fascism developed in Germany, etc. But at the same time we committed another error. In defining the nature of the Italian economy, we limited ourselves to seeing how much was produced in the countryside and how much was produced in the cities. We did not allow for the fact that Italy is one of the countries where industry and finance are most highly concentrated; we did not allow for the fact that it wasn’t enough to consider agriculture’s role, but that, instead, we should have seen the very advanced organic composition of Italian capital. It should have been sufficient to see the concentration, the monopolies, etc., in order to draw the conclusion that Italian capitalism was not a weak capitalism after all. We were not the only ones to commit this error. This error might be termed general.... You see, when the analysis is wrong, the political orientation will be wrong too. Another problem arises in this regard: does the establishment of a fascist dictatorship represent a strengthening or weakening of the bourgeoisie? This was much discussed, especially in Germany. Some comrades mistakenly contended that the fascist dictatorship is only a sign of the weakening of the bourgeoisie. They said: the bourgeoisie resorts to fascism because it cannot govern with the old systems, and this is a sign of weakness. It’s true, fascism does develop because the internal contradictions have reached such a point that the bourgeoisie is compelled to liquidate the democratic forms. From this point of view, it means that we are confronted with a profound crisis, that a revolutionary crisis is brewing which the bourgeoisie wants to meet. But to see only this side leads us to mistakenly draw this conclusion: that the more the fascist movement grows, the more acute the revolutionary crisis becomes. The comrades who reasoned this way did not see the second element, the mobilization of the petty bourgeoisie. And they did not see that this mobilization, this element, contained factors strengthening the bourgeoisie inasmuch as it permitted it to govern with methods different from the democratic ones. Another mistake was to lapse into fatalism. This concept was expressed by Radek, who said these comrades think Marx’s affirmation that between capitalism and socialism there is a period of transition, represented by the dictatorship of the proletariat, should be superseded by the affirmation that between capitalism and socialism there must be a period of fascist dictatorship.

Another mistake results in the loss of perspective and the belief that everything is over once fascism has seized power.... The threat of fascism hasn’t passed, but it has been fought, which in itself has aggravated the bourgeoisie’s crisis. Fascism is getting ready to counterattack, to launch a new offensive; we must organize our forces to repel it. And we cannot comprehend the problem if we do not see it this way: as class struggle; as the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in which the bourgeoisie has at stake the establishment of its dictatorship, in its most open form, and the proletariat has at stake the establishment of its own dictatorship, which it arrives at by fighting in the defense of all its democratic rights. Let’s look now at another question, the question of fascist ideology. What does it represent in this struggle? When we analyze this ideology, what do we find? Everything. It is an eclectic ideology. An element common to all fascist movements everywhere is a vehement nationalist ideology. It’s not necessary to speak at length with regard to Italy. This element is even stronger in Germany because Germany is a nation which was defeated in the war, and the nationalist element lent itself even more readily to rallying the masses. Besides this element there are numerous fragments derived from other sources: for example, from social democracy. The corporative ideology, for instance, whose underlying principle is class collaboration, isn’t an invention of fascism but of social democracy. But there are still other elements which do not come from social democracy either; for example, the conception of capitalism (not common to all fascisms, but one you will find in the Italian, German and French versions) according to which imperialism is a degeneration that must be eliminated, while the true capitalist economy is that of the original period, and so there must be a return to the origins. You will find this conception in a number of democratic currents, for instance in Giustizia e Libertà. This is not a social-democratic, but a romantic ideology revealing the petty bourgeoisie’s effort to make the world, which is moving forward toward socialism, turn back. New concepts are arising in fascist ideology in Italy and Germany. In Italy, there is talk of going beyond capitalism by giving it elements of organization. Here, the social-democratic element turns up again, but they also rob from Communism (planning, etc.). Fascist ideology contains a series of heterogeneous ingredients. We must bear this in mind because this trait enables us to understand the purpose this ideology serves. It serves to solder together various functions in the struggle for dictatorship over the working masses and to create a vast movement for this scope. Fascist ideology is an instrument created to bind these elements together. A part of the ideology—the nationalist part—directly serves the bourgeoisie; the other acts as a bond. I warn you against the tendency to regard fascist ideology as something that is solidly formed, complete, homogeneous. Nothing more closely resembles a chameleon than fascist ideology. Don’t look at fascist ideology without considering the objectives which fascism proposes to reach at a given moment with a given ideology.

Its fundamental line remains vehement nationalism and the analogy with social-democratic ideology is also a petty-bourgeois ideology, that is to say the petty-bourgeois content is common to both ideologies; but this analogy expresses itself in different forms at different times in different countries. Let’s rapidly lay the groundwork for the next lesson. How, in Italy, at a specific moment, was the problem of organizing the fascist dictatorship posed, and how was the reactionary movement organized? This is the subject. Let’s go back to the origins. On the one hand there is the revolutionary crisis. The bourgeoisie is unable to rule with the old systems. There is general discontent, a working-class offensive, political strikes, general strikes, etc. In short, we are in the post-war period—the deep revolutionary crisis. One factor especially stand out: the impossibility for the Italian ruling class to apply the old policy, the old policy applied up to 1912, Giolitti’s “reformist” policy; not reformist because the reformists were in power, but because it was a policy of concessions to certain groups, aimed at keeping the bourgeois dictatorship alive in its parliamentary guise. This policy no longer stands up in the postwar period because the masses of workers and peasants rebel against it. Two major developments can be noted in the postwar period: the great growth of the Italian Socialist Party, which counts hundreds of thousands of members and millions of voters; and the reawakening of the peasant classes, divided among many parties because the peasants are fragmented. The Popular Party is a peasant party. At the same time we see peasant movements, land takeovers in the South, etc. The workers and peasants move to the attack and their bloc begins to form. This confluence of the working-class and peasant attacks can be found in its most advanced forms in postwar Italy. It signals the end of the parliamentary forms. The bourgeoisie must liquidate parliamentarianism. Discontent is spread not only to the workers, but also encompasses the petty bourgeoisie. Petty-bourgeois, ex-servicemen’s and other movements spring up. The bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie no longer can tolerate the existing regime; they want to change it. This is the ground on which fascism arises.

Palmiro Togliatti, Lectures on Fascism (New York: International, 1976), 1-11. Reprinted by permission of International Publishers. See also Joan Barth Urban, Moscow and the Italian Communist Party: From Togliatti to Berlinguer (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995).

V FASCIST AND ANTI-FASCIST CULTURE

22 Fascist Anthems Fascism made a cult of youth, and “Giovinezza” was its anthem. Sung on the streets, during marches, and after Mussolini and other officials had made speeches, it soon became synonymous with the regime. Here—and in the “Inno fascista”—are the myths of war, youth, nationalism, the leader, and heroism that fascism upheld. These and other anthems can beheard—along with speeches by Mussolini—at the neofascist website www.italiarsi.org/cantiitalia/canfascivent.htm Giovinezza (Youth) Hail O heroic people Hail O immortal fatherland your sons are reborn with faith in ideals. The valor of your warriors the virtue of your pioneers the vision of Alighieri today shines in all hearts. Youth, Youth, springtime of beauty in the harshness of life, your song cries out and goes. From Italy and its borders: the Italians are remade, Mussolini has remade them for tomorrow’s war For the glory of labor for peace and laurel for the pillory of those

who repudiate the Patria. Youth, Youth, springtime of beauty in the harshness of life, your song cries out and goes. The poets and the artisans gentlemen and peasants, with pride as Italians swear faith in Mussolini. There is no poor neighborhood that does not send its ranks, that does not unfurl the flag of redeeming fascism. Youth, Youth, springtime of beauty in the harshness of life, your song cries out and goes. Inno Fascista (All’armi) (Fascist Hymn [To Arms!]) To arms! To arms! To arms, we are the fascists terror of the communists. We are the components of fascism we will uphold its cause until death and we will always fight strongly as long as we have blood in our hearts. Always singing the praises of our Patria which all united we will defend against adversaries and traitors, who one by one we will exterminate. To arms! To arms! To arms, we are fascists.... Everyone knows our goals: to fight with the certainty of victory and this never just for glory but for the good cause of freedom.

We know well how to scatter The bolsheviks that we fight and at our cries, that rabble will tremble, will tremble.

Opera Balilla poster published by the Ministry of National Education. (Courtesy of Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.)

To arms! To arms! To arms, we are fascists.... We will carry victory to all fields because we lack not courage and we will cry stronger, stronger and we will sustain our holy cause. On guard, friends! Because at all times we will always be ready until the glory of us fascists will triumph in all Italy. To arms! To arms! To arms, we are the fascists.... We are the enemies of bolshevism because they want neither Patria nor Family because they are rubbish and mud who, in scorning us, we must crush. Crying always “Long Live Italy!” And down with all her critics raise high the tricolor which will always be our love.

Translations by Stanislao G. Pugliese.

23 Mussolini the Man Margherita G. Sarfatti Although best known as Mussolini’s Jewish mistress, Margherita Sarfatti (1883-1961) was an intellectual and a patroness of the arts. As a young woman, she was active as a militant socialist and participated in the feminist movement in Italy. It was while in Milan writing for the socialist daily Avanti! that she met and befriended Mussolini, then still a revolutionary socialist. Sarfatti became the art editor for Mussolini’s newspaper, Il Popolo d’Italia, and later the director of his journal Gerarchia. Through her influence on Mussolini, Sarfatti exerted considerable authority over the artistic and cultural policies of the regime. She was the moving force behind the Novecento (literally “twentieth century”) movement that attempted an illfated synthesis between ancient Roman ideals and modernism. Her biography of Mussolini was immensely popular and based on the Duce’s private letters and diaries. Mussolini was always careful about his image and often instructed the newspapers to print photos of him wrestling with lion cubs, racing cars, riding horses, or—stripped bare to the waist—helping peasants harvest wheat. Sarfatti’s biography is hagiography but also inadvertently revealing. With all the contradictions in him and all the complexity, all the apparent but not real inconsistencies, what are we to make of Mussolini? Some time towards the end of 1924, the Fascist daily paper of a great Italian city set on foot a discussion among its readers regarding Mussolini’s character. Mussolini put a stop to it. “Be so good as to send for the editor,” he telegraphed to the Prefect of the district, “and request him to close the discussion with the following remark: Poichè l’onorevole Mussolini dichiara di non sapere esattamente ciò che egliè, assai difficilmente lo possono sapere gli altri. “—As he did not know exactly what he was himself, it would be very difficult for others to know. The newspaper in question was, he commanded, to publish this autodefinizione, as he called it, and to bring the correspondence to an end. It might be resumed, perhaps, fifty years later!

Margherita Sarfatti (photographed by Mario Nunes Vais) was Mussolini’s Jewish mistress and a patroness of the avant-garde. (Courtesy of Philip V. Cannistraro and the Istituto Centrale per il Catologo e la Documentazione, Rome.) An error in psychology, perhaps, for we are apt not to understand our own dispositions so well as others do, but it makes an interesting document! The journalist in Mussolini comes out in most of his public utterances. Answering a body of great manufacturers, who were endeavouring to muzzle a well-known Labour spokesman and agitator, he called on them to desist and not to injure the man’s prospects. In the Mussolini of 1914, he urged, “could you have foreseen the Mussolini of today?” Even now, when he is Prime Minister, as he confessed once to a gathering of his newspaper colleagues, Mussolini has not ceased to be a journalist. He takes a supply of scribbling paper with him even to Cabinet Councils, and often, when he may seem to be engaged upon ministerial memoranda, he is really composing “little articles” for the Press. Even in his official communications we shall often find the true journalist’s touch. “We are surrounded,” he declares in one such document, “by pedagogues and wiseacres, every one of them preoccupied with some logical dilemma.” And it is the leader-writers of the Popolo d’Italia whom we recognize in the phrase in which the Italian Premier sums up the League of Nations as “un couvent de laïques, fantasques, impuissants et, par cela même, dangereux.” Statesman and journalist, his are the methods, frank, sensible, brusque, which have rid us of the diplomacy of the old order. He says out boldly and clearly what others would whisper in circumlocution. His words reach their goal unmodified and unimpeded. And concerning things as to which he might be misinterpreted, he holds his tongue. “It is journalism that has formed my mind,” he himself has declared; “it was journalism that enabled me to get to know the human material of which politics are made. Before receiving in the Hall of Victory at the Palazzo Chigi those Commissions which bombard me daily with their memorials .. many thousands of Italians of all professions and of all ages had made their way into my little editorial den.... It was as though all Italy had been unrolled before my gaze. It was journalism, moreover, that gave me a certain capacity for hard work. The function of governing is not a transcendental thing, as some people seem to imagine—it is just a matter of working hard. It means remaining at your desk from ten in the morning until midnight.” Speaking once to a number of journalists, Mussolini said: “You know I respect journalism and I have given proof of this. All I ask is that journalism shall take into account certain inevitable historic necessities. I want the press to co-operate with the nation. And with all my friendly and brotherly feeling for you, there is also a feeling of real respect, because I do not know but that some of you may carry the marshal’s baton, I will not say in your knapsack, but in your editorial portfolios.”

Impulsive and meditative, a realist and an idealist, perfervid and yet wise, a romantic in his aspirations but a classic in his handling of practical affairs, Mussolini has a groundwork of consistency in him underlying all these seeming incompatibilities. This, above all, may be confidently said of him—he is a man of courage. He loves danger. The very idea of cowardice revolts him. His physical courage has found amusing illustration of late in his treatment of the lioness which was presented to him some time ago and with which he is often to be seen playing in the Zoological Garden. “Italia, Italia, bella!” he calls out to it in tones of tender affection, and the splendid young animal comes bounding up to him. That was all very well when it was only a small cub, kept in the house, in a little room close to his study. But now it is big and it is caged with four other young lions which, as the keeper says, “do not know His Excellency,” and frolicking with it is a dangerous pastime. The keeper, for his part, thinking of his own responsibilities, would gladly see it ended! This also may be added. He is a man of energy and a true Italian. “A man like yourselves,” Mussolini described himself in an address to a body of miners, “with just your own qualities and your own defects—with all that constitutes the essential elements of that peculiar type of humanity which makes the Italian.” An Italian, then, par excellence, and a young Italian. “Why do I go about on horseback?” he exclaimed once in the Senate, in reply to some carping allusion to this habit of his. “Why, because I am young! Youth, however, is a malady of which one becomes cured a little every day.” This characteristic outburst occurred in the course of one of his great speeches. He had been discoursing gravely and emphatically to his distinguished audience, which comprised many of the most famous men in Italy, but at this point he had broken out into a vehement improvisation. Youth with Mussolini is something more than a matter of mere chronology, it is a synonym for life and energy and power. His youthfulness is, indeed, the thing about him that most impresses strangers who meet him in private for the first time. “He is not a bit like what he seems in his portraits,” you will hear them declare. “He looks so young!” And, on public occasions, when he smiles the effect is astonishing. “Why, he is all amiability!” those who have known him only from his photograph exclaim. This is not the morose, brutal-looking Mussolini that they had imagined. A countrywoman from the Abruzzi, who had forced her way through the crowd and come close up to him, exclaimed out loud with naive audacity: “But why do the pictures always give you such an ugly scowl?” “The blacksmith’s frowning son” an American once called him. The essential truth, indeed, may be found in that legendary frowning, scowling Mussolini. He knows men and he knows how undesirable and how dangerous it is to be at too close quarters with them. “A group of four” is his ideal. With more than that you begin to have a mob. He has no liking for a “refectory,” he will complain when he has to sit down at table with too large a company. When on occasion we of the Popolo d’Italia indulged in some festive celebrations, he did not drink convivially like the others. He emptied his glass at a gulp,

standing alone. An unconvivial, unsociable individualist by nature, Mussolini cultivates this inborn aloofness as a weapon of defense; this explains the frown. We have here a cooperation of instinct and policy. A man’s attitude is a confession, sometimes, of the aspect which he would fain present to others. No one finds him haughty or repellent, but no one can boast of being on terms of intimacy with him. I have seen him kiss on both cheeks a number of men well on in years upon whom he was conferring the order of the Star of Labour—an order which he himself instituted. He kissed the first of them on both cheeks formally in correct “protocol” fashion, but when it came to the others, the kisses that were exchanged became quite hearty. The old men might have found in him a long-lost brother! I have, indeed, often seen him embracing other men and I have seen him kissing the hand of a lady or fondling a child in the affectionate way that seems so natural in this land of lavish caresses; but I have never seen anyone presume to buttonhole him or to place a hand upon his shoulder. Were anyone to do so, I sometimes wonder what kind of cataclysm would come about! Even those who are entitled to address him by his Christian name—his brother, for instance, and the comrades of his boyhood—do so with a certain involuntary hesitation and in accents of respect, almost of reverence. He knows well the meaning and worth of that word comrade—camerata. The word “friend” is another matter. He calls no one friend. “If the Eternal Father were to say to me: ‘I am your friend,’ I would put up my fists to Him,” he is capable of declaring in angry mood. And when some case of perfidy or treachery has come before him he will exclaim: “If my own father were to come back to the world I would not place my trust in him.” “No intimate friendship, a minimum of personal feelings”—that ideal of Buddhist and Christian monasteries, of Port Royal and of all religious ascetics, might almost be taken as Mussolini’s rule of life. Apart from the cause to which he has devoted himself and from the ideas which he incarnates, he holds aloof from the world. The “curriculum vitae” of those who surround him does not interest him. Nothing mean or petty can take root in him. And as he does not go through life haggling about things but pays the full price, he secures the big things, the important things, which are essential to his ambition—“ambition, that last infirmity of noble minds.” He himself laughs at this infirmity in his own case. “If all shall have gone well,” he said to me once with a smile of irony on his lips, “I shall perhaps thirty years hence be accorded a bust which will serve as a rendezvous for nurserymaids and their young men in some public garden. ‘Behind the Mussolini bust at eight,’ perhaps some young lovers will whisper! A fine satisfaction that will be!” He was silent for a time. “After all, Signora,” he continued, “what have I achieved? I am a bit of a journalist, and for the time being a Minister like so many others. I must get this people into some kind of order. Then I shall have fulfilled my task. I shall feel then that I am someone.”

Another silence. Then he went on: “And yet—and yet! Yes, I am obsessed by this wild desire—it consumes my whole being. I want to make a mark on my era with my will, like a lion with its claw! A mark like this!” And, as with a claw, he scratched the covering of a chair-back from end to end! Margherita G. Sarfatti, The Life of Mussolini, trans. Frederica Whyte (New York: Stokes, 1925), 340-45. On Sarfatti, see Philip V. Cannistraro and Brian R. Sullivan, Il Duce’s Other Woman (New York: Morrow, 1993); on Mussolini, see the recent biography in English, R. J. B. Bosworth, Mussolini (London: Arnold, 2002).

24 The Sacred Myths of Fascism Emilio Gentile We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, it is passion. It is not necessary that it shall be a reality. It is a reality by the fact that it is a good, a hope, a faith, that it is courage. Our myth is the Nation, our myth is the greatness of the Nation! And to this myth, to this grandeur, that we wish to translate into a complete reality, we subordinate all the rest. Benito Mussolini The symbolic universe of Fascist religion centered upon the myth and cult of the Duce; these were assuredly the most spectacular and popular aspects of the lictorial cult. But Fascist religion did not begin with the myth of Mussolini; rather, it was created out of the collective experience of a movement that considered itself invested with a missionary charisma of its own, one that was in fact not, in its beginnings, identified with Mussolini. Many traditions from the past flowed together in forming the way Fascist religion saw itself; and Fascist mythology, which derived in part from these older traditions and in part from its own experience, was much richer and more complex than the Mussolini myth, even though the latter occupied the foreground. The Mussolini myth came into being with the environment of the Fascist religion once the latter had been institutionalized. Even if the Duce’s figure was “numinous” on its own, thanks to his charismatic personality, his myth should therefore properly be considered a derivative of the Fascist religion. But there is no doubt that the myth of the man—also nurtured outside the Fascist environment—contributed greatly to the growth and value of the fideistic dimension of Fascism. The very existence of this dimension, moreover, contributed to reinforcing the charismatic role of the leader, thus glorifying the myth until it worked its way into the heart of the lictorial cult. The persona of the Duce, as a fundamental component of the mythical and symbolic universe of Fascism—which it effectively became after 1925—cannot be seen independently of Fascist religion.

THE MYTH AND THE CULT To understand Mussolinism with the lictorial cult, it is important to distinguish the myth, or

rather the myths, of Mussolini from the cult of the Duce. A personality cult always has a mythological basis, but the myth of a man is not always accompanied by ritual acts of dedication and devotion. In the case of other charismatic leaders, such as Stalin and Hitler, myth and cult developed simultaneously within their movements, and as a function of these movements. In Mussolini’s case, however, not only did the myth precede the cult, but it showed up in a number of guises even before the birth of Fascism and before his rise to power. In fact there are a number of different “myths” that correspond to different periods of his life. They originate in differing environments and different political and cultural contexts. Each of these myths, however, created a charismatic aura around the man and laid the groundwork for the Fascist myth of Mussolini and the creation of a cult of his personality during the years of the regime. First one could mention a socialist myth, created when Mussolini was only twenty-nine, when, from being an unknown, provincial, socialist party leader, he suddenly appeared on the national scene as the “new man” of the revolutionary faction that took over the party at its national congress in Reggio Emilia in July 1912. Mussolini became the idol of the socialist masses, the very model of a revolutionary leader, the symbol of a new and intransigent socialism that had liquidated reformism and was marching resolutely toward revolution. Then, when Mussolini chose intervention, the socialist myth collapsed and was transformed into the anti-myth of the corrupt traitor who had sold out. Meanwhile, between 1912 and 1914, alongside the socialist myth, another myth was in the process of formation among those intellectuals, grouped around Giuseppe Prezzolini’s La Voce and Gaetano Salvemini’s Unità, who fought in the united anti-Giolittian front. For Prezzolini, Mussolini was “a man, and stands out in a world of half-men.” Salvemini admired the young socialist leader as a “strong and direct man,” a serious revolutionary, of the kind who “say what they mean and do as they say, and therefore bear within them a part of Italy’s future destiny.” This myth endured, and indeed grew stronger after the collapse of the socialist myth, for Mussolini’s choice of intervention was considered a proof of the myth of the new man in Italian politics, the man whose personal political drama symbolized, as the futurist painter Carlo Carra wrote on November 15, 1914, “the drama of our whole generation.” From having been the idol of the socialist masses, Mussolini became the hero of the political and cultural avant-garde of interventionism; he was the future renovator of the nation. “You, Benito Mussolini,” wrote a young southerner at the end of 1914, “must give Italy a new people.” This second myth remained attached to Mussolini right into the postwar period, but its attractiveness remained limited to the “fighting elites,” such as the Arditi, the futurists, and the rump of interventionists with whom Mussolini created the Fascist party. Although the use of the term Duce, typical of the language of the Italian left, was already used for Mussolini in his socialist period, the birth of the cult of the Duce did not coincide with the birth or growth of Fascism. For a majority of the first Fascists, at least until 1921, the Duce—that is, the charismatic leader of the “Italian revolution”—was not Mussolini but Gabriele D‘Annunzio. It was to D’Annunzio that the various revolutionary nationalist movements turned, especially

during the Fiume adventure. Within the organization of the Fascist movement itself, although Mussolini was the most prestigious of its leaders because he was a national figure and because he edited an influential daily, he was only a member of its propaganda bureau and its executive committee. Nor was his authority undisputed or worshiped like that of a charismatic leader. The Fascists who knew him thought of him as a “comrade” or “our friend Benito,” while others called him “Professor Mussolini.” When Fascism became a mass movement, Mussolini had to face a genuine revolt by the various squadristi leaders against his claim to being recognized as founder and leader of Fascism. Only after the November 1921 party congress, which authorized Fascism’s becoming a party rather than a movement, was Mussolini accepted as the duce of Fascism. Even that recognition, however, was far from giving him any dictatorial power such as Hitler achieved within the National Socialist party in the same year. There Mussolini imposed himself as much through his political know-how as through any recognition by the Fascists that he had exceptional charismatic gifts. He was accepted as Leader and Duce only once the antiMussolini revolt and the attempt to draft D’Annunzio was quashed. At that point the provincial leaders realized that none of them could seriously challenge Mussolini for the leadership and at the same time maintain unity. Mussolini was the only one capable of keeping in line all the little local potentates who made up the Fascist movement at the time; therefore, he was the only one able to keep them in some sort of precarious unity. Even after Fascism came to power, there arose fresh internal resistance to Mussolini’s claim to exercise, through his authority as prime minister, absolute and indisputable authority as Fascism’s leader, to whom therefore absolute obedience was required. In the various crises that shook the party from 1923 to 1925, there were Fascists who rejected the identification of Fascism with Mussolinism. In 1924 Camillo Pellizzi felt it necessary to remind Mussolini that “a major political movement or a nation on the march is not ever to be totally summed up in one individual or Leader. Thus Fascism is not summed up in You.” Nonetheless, these very crises helped the rise of the myth of the Duce. He was glorified, spontaneously and instrumentally, as the one unifying factor in Fascism and as the only point of reference superior to the local Fascist potentates. In the rivalry among Fascist leaders, all of them eventually had recourse to Mussolini’s authority to legitimize their actions, thus simply adding to his authority. As the Fascist regime was being built, Mussolini’s authority ceased to be challenged. This phenomenon in turn contributed to his mythological status as the necessary element of coherence and stability in the balance of forces that made up the regime, as well as the supreme arbiter and mediator between the various little duces, all of whom could overcome their rival ambitions only by submitting to the authority of the Duce. As the regime advanced, at each stage the Duce’s position was codified in the party’s or the state’s statutes in ways that progressively enhanced his superior position as the leader of Fascism. In the 1926 statute, the Duce appears for the first time at the head of the party hierarchy, as “Supreme Guide.” The first catechism of Fascist doctrine, prepared by Augusto Turati and destined for the young and the public as a whole, concluded with a series of

questions and answers about the Duce and with the Fascist Oath, defined as “the Italian’s duty toward Mussolini and toward the Fascist Revolution.” By the time of the 1932 statute, Mussolini had been elevated over the party hierarchy into a separate position, and by 1938 he was formally identified as the “Head of the National Fascist Party.” In the same year a new catechism was issued by the party, duly brought up to date with a section titled “Defense of the Race,” in which Mussolini was described as “the creator of Fascism, the restorer of civil society, chief of the Italian people and founder of the empire.” As the statutory system of the regime’s institutions was consistently revised, the figure of the Duce acquired a juridical meaning, for the word Duce now meant not only “the leader of the party” but also “the Leader of Fascism, the Guide, the Supreme Head of the Regime, which is henceforward indissolubly linked to the State.” The myth of Mussolini was thus fully integrated into the juridical and institutional structure of the Fascist state, which—given the scope and force of the attributes reserved for Mussolini as both “myth” and “leader,” in practice, in legislation, and in the theology and liturgy of the Fascist state—now took on the aspect of what I have characterized elsewhere as “totalitarian caesarism.” However, the affirmation and institutionalization of the myth of the Duce were by no means due solely to events within the party. That myth, as it emerged in the wake of the March on Rome, was made of multiple strands, some of them quite distinct from Fascism. As others have correctly observed, it is necessary to make a clear distinction between strictly Fascist manifestations of the myth and cult of the Duce, which have a political and an ideological basis, and generically popular manifestations, which often had no such basis. Emilio Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy, trans. Keith Botsford (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 132-36. Reprinted by permission of Harvard University Press and Gius. Laterza and Figli Spa.

25 The Fascist Decalogue Like Mussolini’s aphorism, the fascist decalogue was supposed to encapsulate the essence of the regime. It cannot be a coincidence that it is similar in number to ten more ethical commandments. Notice that number 8 in the version of 1934 (“Mussolini is always right”—often found painted in public spaces) becomes number ten in the 1938 version.

FIRST VERSION (1934) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Know that the Fascist, and in particular the soldier, must not believe in perpetual peace. Days of imprisonment are always deserved. The nation serves even as a sentinel over a can of petrol. A companion must be a brother; first, because he lives with you, and secondly because he thinks like you. The rifle and the cartridge belt, and the rest, are confided to you not to rust in leisure, but to be preserved in war. Do not ever say “The Government will pay ...” hecause it is you who pay; and the Government is that which you willed to have, and for which you put on a uniform. Discipline is the soul of armies; without it there are no soldiers, only confusion and defeat. Mussolini is always right. For a volunteer there are no extenuating circumstances when he is disobedient. One thing must be dear to you above all: the life of the Duce.

A mosaic at EUR in Rome glorifying the Duce accompanied by squadristi performing the Roman fascist salute and carrying the trusty manganello. (Courtesy of Borden Painter, Trinity College.)

SECOND VERSION (1938) 1. Remember that those who fell for the revolution and for the empire march at the head of your columns. 2. Your comrade is your brother. He lives with you, thinks with you, and is at your side in the battle. 3. Service to Italy can be rendered at all times, in all places, and by every means. It can be paid with toil and also with blood. 4. The enemy of Fascism is your enemy. Give him no quarter. 5. Discipline is the sunshine of armies. It prepares and illuminates the victory. 6. He who advances to the attack with decision has victory already in his grasp. 7. Conscious and complete obedience is the virtue of the Legionary. 8. There do not exist things important and things unimportant. There is only duty. 9. The Fascist revolution has depended in the past and still depends on the bayonets of its Legionaries.

10. Mussolini is always right. www.historyguide.org/europe/duce.htnl

26 Intellectuals and the Regime In late March 1925, Giovanni Gentile was instructed by the regime to host a Convegrto per la Cultura Fascista. The aim was to demonstrate to the world that Italian intellectuals supported fascism and found no contradiction between fascism and culture. The resulting Manifesto degli intellettuali fascisti was published on 21 April (the traditional “birthday” of Rome) 1925 and signed by such leading intellectual lights as the nationalist Enrico Corradini, the futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the writer Ugo Ojetti, the legal philosopher Alfred Rocco, the publisher of the Enciclopedia italiana Giovanni Treccani, and historian Gioacchino Vole. On 1 May (the International day of labor), Benedetto Croce published a countermanifesto in the pages of Giovanni Amendola paper, Il Mondo. Gentile and Croce had been longtinae collaborators on the review La Critica. Among the signatories of the anti-fascist manifesto were the writer Sem Benelli; the historians Guido De Ruggiero, Luigi Salvatorelli, and Arturo Carlo Jemolo; the journalist Giovanni Amendola (later assassinated by the regime); the economist Luigi Einaudi; and the Marxist Rodolofo Mondolfo. Later signers included the juridical philosophers Piero Calamandrei and Silvio Trentin, sociologist Gaetano Mosca, and historian Gaetano Salvemini.

MANIFESTO OF FASCIST INTELLECTUALS (1925) Origins Fascism is a recent yet ancient movement of the Italian spirit. It is intimately linked to the history of the Italian nation, yet it is not devoid of meaning and of interest for other nations. Its immediate origins must be sought in 1919, when a handful of veterans from the trenches gathered around Benito Mussolini, determined to combat vigorously the then-dominant democratic-socialist [demosocialist] politics. Democratic socialism was blind to all but one side of the great war from which the Italian people had emerged at once weary and victorious; the side of immediate material consequences of this war. It squandered the war’s moral value when it did not resort to outright denial. It presented the war to Italians in a crudely individualistic and utilitarian light. The war, it claimed, had been little more than the sum of individual sacrifices, sacrifices for which each and every party was to be repaid according to the precise degree of suffering. The results were an arrogant and menacing opposition of individuals to the state; neglect of the state’s authority; a lowering of the prestige enjoyed by the king and the army (symbols of a nation that transcends individuals and individual social

categories); the unleashing of base passions and instincts; the fostering of social disintegration, moral degeneration, and a self-centered and mindless spirit of revolt against all forms of discipline and law. Pitting the individual against the state is the characteristic political expression of a soul so corrupt that it cannot abide by any higher life principle that would vigorously channel and contain the individual’s feelings and thoughts. Fascism was, accordingly, a political and moral movement at its origins. It understood and championed politics as a training ground for selfdenial and sacrifice in the name of an idea, a training ground from which the individual derives his reason for being, his sense of freedom, and all his rights. The idea in question is that of the fatherland. The fatherland is an ideal that is in the process of being historically actualized but that remains inexhaustible. It represents a distinct, singular historical embodiment of a civilization. But it also represents a living tradition. Far from lingering like a dead memory of the past, it assumes the form of a personality attuned to the end toward which it strives. The fatherland is, therefore, a tradition as well as a sense of mission.

Fascism and the State This explains fascism’s religious character. This uncompromising religiosity is illustrated by the fighting tactics that fascism adopted from 1919 to 1922. Fascists were a minority, both in the country and in Parliament (a small nucleus of deputies was seated after the 1921 elections). The constitutional state was antifascist and necessarily so, inasmuch as it was the state of the majority. Fascism was opposed by precisely such a liberal state whose liberalism was of the agnostic and denunciatory sort that attends only to outward freedoms. “Liberal” because it considered itself extraneous to the conscience of its free citizens and because it was indifferent like a machine toward the actions of individuals. It goes without saying that this was hardly the state the socialists had dreamed of, even if the representatives of a hybrid socialism, daubed in democratic values and parliamentarianism ... were making their peace with its individualistic conception of politics. Nor was this the state that had proved such a powerful ideal during the heroic period of our national resurgence [Risorgimento ] a state engendered through the efforts of a small minority, animated by the power of an idea to which individuals had variously submitted; a state founded with the grand plan of making Italians, now that it had granted them independence and unity. This was the state that fascism, armed with the power of its vision, took on. Any religious idea inviting to sacrifice exerts a special fascination, and the fascist idea was no exception. It attracted a growing group of young supporters and became the party of the young (much as Giuseppe Mazzini’s Giovine Italia movement arose out of the riots of 1831 to satisfy similar political and moral needs). The party even had its own anthem to youth [“Giovinezza”] that the fascists sang with joyful, exultant hearts! Like Mazzini’s Giovine Italia, fascism became the faith of all Italians who disdained the past and who longed for renewal. It was a faith like other faiths that confront a fully constituted

reality that must be destroyed, melted down into a crucible of new energies, and forged according to a new, ardent, uncompromising ideal. It was the very faith that had ripened in the trenches and in intense reflection on the sacrifice accomplished in the course of battle, a sacrifice for the only worthy goal: the vigor and greatness of the fatherland. It was an energetic, violent faith, unwilling to respect anything opposed to the fatherland’s vigor and greatness. This is how squadrism arose. Determined youths, armed, organized in military fashion and dressed in black shirts, placed themselves outside the law in order to institute a new law. They fought the state in order to found a new state. Squadrism’s targets were the proponents of national disintegration, whose activities culminated in the general strike of July 1922. On 28 October 1922, fascism finally dared to mount an insurrection as, after occupying public buildings in the provinces, its armed columns marched on the capital. The March on Rome (whether in its execution or its preparatory phase) was not without casualties, particularly in the Po Valley. Like all courageous actions inspired by the highest moral goals, it was greeted with marvel and admiration, followed by universal acclaim. To many it seemed that the Italian people had recovered the unanimity it had felt on the verge of war but now redoubled by its awareness of the nation’s recent victory and by the invigorating conviction that the victorious nation was now on the road to recovering its financial and moral integrity.

The Fascist Government Squadrism and outlaw activities ceased, and the components of the fascist regime began to come together. On 29 and 30 October, the fifty thousand Black Shirts who had marched on Rome departed the capital in orderly fashion, but only after parading before His Royal Highness, the King. They were following the orders of the Duce, now the head of the government and the soul animating the new Italy that fascism had willed. Was the revolution over? In part yes, in part no. Certainly squadrism no longer had a place. The MVSN was founded in order to absorb ex-squadrists into the ranks of the armed forces. Then there was the matter of reshaping the government. If fascism already enjoyed the consent of the large majority of the population that was convinced that it alone had the capacity to tap and discipline all the nation’s forces, it still faced the challenge of making the legislative changes needed to insure that the state closely mirrored the social currents and spiritual exigencies of today’s Italian populace. This transformation is currently under way within a setting where law and order reign supreme. The government has put in place a rigorous fiscal policy that, after years of deficit spending, has managed to balance the national budget by reorganizing the army, the judicial system, and the schools (while avoiding shocks and uncertainties). Public opinion has ebbed and flowed, the inevitable result of a national press whose violent opposition and desperate urge to turn the clock back lead it to seize upon every mistake and every incident in order to rally the citizenry against the new government’s tenacious work of rebuilding.

Foreigners who have come to fascist Italy have had to pass through the ring of fire and prohibitions created by the Italian and non-Italian protagonists of a violent campaign that aims to isolate the peninsula from the rest of the world. Italy has been caluminated as being a nation where the most violent and cynical whims rule unchecked, where all legal rights and guarantees of justice have been abrogated. But those who have made the journey and have seen the new Italy with their own eyes, heard the new Italians with their own ears, and shared the citizens’ material lives have come to envy the new public order. They have become intrigued by the spirit that strengthens its hold on this well-oiled machine and have discovered that, however intransigent is fascism’s patriotism, its heart is filled with humanity. After all, for fascism the fatherland is not an external appendage. It lives and beats within the chest of every civilized man. Reinvigorated by the tragedy of the latest war, the fatherland within is ever vigilant in its effort to protect the nation’s sacred interests, whether after the war or due to the war. Such a fatherland also consists in the reconsecration of all those traditions and institutions that continuously inform a civilization, beyond the flux and perennial recurrence of tradition. It also teaches the law of subordination of what is particular and inferior to what is universal and immortal. It teaches respect for law and discipline. It teaches freedom, but a freedom that must be conquered through the law, gained by renouncing everything that is capricious, unreasonable, and wasteful. It is an austere concept of life. It is religious seriousness that does not divorce theory from practice, speech from action, that doesn’t devise magnificent ideals so as to relegate them to an other world while we live like cowards and beggars in this world. It consists in the onerous effort to idealize life and to affirm one’s beliefs in one’s very actions or via words that are themselves actions. These are words that bind to the speaker and, in so doing, they bind the world of which he is a living and responsible part at every moment and in every secret flicker of consciousness. The ideal is indeed an ideal, but one for which people do battle in Italy today: fierce and serious battle waged by spirits who are filled with faith. Like all great individual movements, fascism is becoming stronger all the time, more able to attract and to absorb, more effective and integrated in the complex of souls, ideas, interest, and institutions that compose it (the vital merger of the Italian folk). For this reason, it is now beside the point to count and measure mere individuals. The time has come to look at the idea itself and to evaluate it. Like all true ideas, this one is alive and powerfully vibrant. It is not made up by man but made for man.

State and Unions Fascism has been accused of being a reactionary, anti-liberal, anti-working class movement. The accusation is false. Fascism represents, on the contrary, the spirit of progress that drives all of our nation’s forces. Fascism wants to demolish the fallacious incrustations that the old liberal political establishment has layered over the actual activities of every citizen through the atomizing effects of universal suffrage. The latter annihilated the real interests that give individuals a feeling of involvement in the overall system of economic forces. The old order turned the people over to professional politicians controlled by a coalition of ever more

powerful special interests whose aims were in conflict with the nation’s common interest. Fascism, whose leaders, from the highest on down, have all gone through a socialist phase, aims at reconciling two elements that always appeared irreducibly opposed: the state and labor union organizations. The state is to be understood as the juridical force of the nation in its organic and functional unity. The labor unions are to be understood as the juridical force of the individual in his economic activity, protected by the law as a socially distinct activity linked to a given social category. The state is to be understood as the organizer of all individual activities in their organic and concrete dimensions. This hardly marks a retreat from the constitutional state. Rather, it marks a forward step that permits both a higher degree of intrinsic cohesion and more effective popular representation in the legislative branch of government. And they accuse the fascist government of imposing police measures that curtail the freedom of the press! These are factual matters more than matters of principle. In even the most liberal states constitutional liberties have been suspended when made necessary by special circumstances. All of liberalism’s theorists and defenders have recognized the legitimacy of such suspensions. The question then becomes one of judging the government recourse to such police measures. Is it true that portions of the press (whether inadvertently or not) placed the nation at the mercy of extremely serious public disorders? Did the government, acting as it did on behalf of the nation, defend the very freedom that such disturbances would have compromised? The truth of the matter is that the great majority of Italians feels that the government acted appropriately. Proof may be found in the quiet indifference with which the citizenry looks upon the opposition’s fiery protests and complaints. This because it is fascism, not anti-fascism that laboriously strives to erect upon sound foundations the edifice in which the citizenry’s free activities can unfold, guaranteed by a law that is the true expression of their real, organic, concrete will. Today in Italy souls are drawn up on two opposing sides. On the one side stand the fascists; on the other, their enemies: democratic forces of all hues and tendencies. The two form mutually exclusive worlds. Yet the great majority of Italians remains aloof and senses that the source of conflict, as defined by the opposition, lacks the political substance required to hold the people’s interest. Those outside the opposition know well just how elastic is the meaning of the word “freedom,” which so many parties freely bandy about.

The Opposition to Fascism A second point needs to be made. This small-scale opposition to fascism (made up of holdovers from the old Italian politics, whether democratic, reactionary, radical, or Masonic) is irrecoverable. Condemned to stand at the periphery of the political forces actually building the new Italy, it will die a slow death due to internal attrition and inaction. This because it can put forward no counter principle that is not inferior to fascism’s principle. History’s judgments are unwavering in such matters. When two equal but opposing principles confront one another, a higher principle triumphs: the synthesis of two divergent vital elements from which each draws its inspiration. But when two unequal principles confront one another, one inferior and

the other superior, one partial and the other total, then the first must necessarily succumb because it is already contained within the second and because its opposition is simply negative. It is built on nothing. This is how fascists feel with regard to their adversaries. This is why they have an unshakable faith in their triumph and cannot compromise. They can patiently wait for their opponents to come to the inevitable conclusion that they must cease illegal combat just as before they abandoned the legal terrain of parliamentary fights. In the process they will come to recognize that whatever residual vigor and truth their program retains, it is already fully encompassed within the fascist program, but in a bolder, more complex form, better adapted to the realities of history and to the needs of the human spirit. The current spiritual crisis of Italy will be overcome. Then, in the very bosom of fascist and fascistized Italy, new ideas, new programs, and new political parties will slowly ripen and come to life at last. The fascist intellectuals gathered together in Bologna (29-30 March) for the first time ever have formulated the above document in order to address those in Italy and abroad who wish to better understand the National Fascist Party’s doctrine and policies.

A Reply to the Manifesto of Fascist Intellectuals (1925) At a recent gathering in Bologna, fascist intellectuals addressed a manifesto to intellectuals in every nation aimed at explaining and defending the Fascist Party’s politics. While toiling away on so challenging an endeavor, these eager gentlemen must be have forgotten that German intellectuals issued a similar, famous manifesto to the whole world at the beginning of the European war. This manifesto was universally condemned at the time and later on deemed an error by the Germans themselves. If the truth be told, intellectuals—which is to say, the worshipers of science and art— exercise a right and fulfill their duty as citizens when they enroll as members of a political party and serve the party faithfully. But as intellectuals their sole duty is to raise every man and every political party to a higher spiritual plane by means of their critical research and artistic creations, so that men and parties alike may fight the necessary battles and reap ever growing benefits. To overstep the limits of the office that is theirs, to contaminate politics with literature or politics with science, is a mistake. When this mistake is made, as in the present circumstance, in the name of deplorable acts of violence and arrogance and in defense of the suppression of the freedom of the press, it cannot even be considered a generous mistake. Nor is the fascist intellectuals’ gesture one that radiates a refined sensitivity as regards the fatherland, whose travails ought not be paraded before the judgment of foreigners, who, as is perfectly natural, have good reason to view them in terms of the varied and specific political ambitions of their homelands. As for its content, the manifesto brims over with half-baked notions worthy of a schoolchild. At every turn one encounters philosophical confusions and faulty reasoning. For example, the

authors conflate the atomism of certain eighteenth-century political theories with nineteenthcentury liberalism. In so doing, they mistake an anti-historical abstract, and mathematical democratic doctrine with the concept of free competition among political parties whose assigned role it is to take turns at the help of political institutions, a thoroughly historical concept that claims that progress is gradually achieved, so to speak, thanks to political opposition. Two other examples. Elsewhere the manifesto celebrates the necessary submission of each individual to the whole with facile rhetorical flourishes, as if this were the crux of the matter and not the ability of authoritarian forms of government to ensure a more effective moral uplifting of the nation. It also wrongly advocates a dangerous intermingling of economic institutions, such as labor unions, with ethical institutions, such as legislative assemblies, aspiring to unite or, rather, to contaminate the two orders. (The inevitable outcome would be, if not reciprocal corruption, then reciprocal hindrance.) We leave to one side the wellestablished arbitrary interpretations and manipulations of historical fact. The document’s abuse of doctrine and history pales in comparison with its abuse of the term “religion.” According to these esteemed fascist intellectuals, Italy currently has the good fortune of hosting a religious war. Within its borders the deeds of a new gospel are unfolding: a new apostolic mission against an old superstition that resists its demise, though death hovers over it, and it will succumb sooner or later. Cited as evidence of this state of affairs are the ill feelings and hatreds that, now more than ever pit one Italian against another. The overall effect is that of a lugubrious joke. It is certainly disingenuous to chalk up to “religious strife” the hatred and ill feelings stirred up by a party that insults the members of other parties by dubbing them “non-Italians” or “foreigners” and that, in so doing, transforms itself into a foreign oppressor in the eyes of these very citizens (a tactic that introduces into the life of the fatherland feelings and habits more characteristic of actual wars). The same goes for the attempt to ennoble as “religion” the air of suspicion and animosity that has become so widespread that it has pitted even university youth against one another, youth heretofore bound together by the old, true brotherhood of youthful shared ideals. This verbose manifesto is of little help when it comes to explaining what this new gospel, this new religion, this new faith actually consists of. The manifesto itself, in its mute eloquence, confronts the unbiased reader with an incoherent, bizarre mish-mash of demagoguery and appeals to authority, vows of reverence for the law, ultramodern concepts and mildewed old rubbish, absolutist stances and Bolshevik tendencies, expressions of unbelief and flattery of the Catholic Church, blasts against culture, and sterile nods in the direction of a culture devoid of the necessary premises, mystical swoons, and cynical utterances. As for the present government, it has enacted or initiated a number of plausible measures. But, like the manifesto’s formulations, they contain nothing original, nothing that points in the direction of a brand new political system bearing the label “fascism.” We feel no urge, therefore, to embrace this chaotic, ungraspable “religion” and to abandon our old faith, a faith that, for two and a half centuries, has formed the core of Italy’s resurgent spirit and modern nationhood. A faith that encompasses the love of truth, the pursuit of justice, a global commitment to humane and civic values, a zeal for intellectual and moral edification, and a deep concern for freedom (the driving force and guarantor of all progress). When we

turn our gaze toward the leaders of the Risorgimento, men who labored, suffered, and died for the Italian cause, we see expressions of displeasure and dismay creeping over their faces in reaction to our enemies’ words and actions. We also see them gravely admonishing us to grasp the flag ever more firmly in our hands. Our faith is neither an artificial or abstract device nor the product of a cerebral delirium induced by uncertain and ill-understood theories. Rather, it requires embrace of a moral structure. In their manifesto, the fascist intellectuals repeat the commonplace that the Italian Risorgimento was carried out by a minority. But they show no awareness that it is precisely for this reason that our political and social establishment was frail. On the contrary, they seem to take pride in the (perhaps only apparent) indifference that a majority of Italian citizens demonstrates as regards the conflicts between fascism and its opponents. Italian liberals never took delight in such a state of affairs. They strove instead to insure the involvement of an ever greater number of Italians in public life. Hence their most controversial reforms, like the enactment of universal suffrage. Hence also the favor with which many liberals initially greeted the fascist movement, founded upon the hope that new forces would reinvigorate Italian political life, forces of renewal and (why not?) forces of preservation. Never did liberals contemplate a politics that satisfies most material needs but betrays the ideals of the Risorgimento and replicates the arts of (mis)rule developed by absolutist, quietist governments. Even today, we are overcome neither by despair nor by a feeling of resignation when faced with the majority’s supposed inertia and indifference with the obstacles being interposed to freedom. What matters most is knowing that we are striving for that which is intrinsically good. The present political strife in Italy, thanks to the very nature of these conflicts, will revive in our people a far deeper and more concrete understanding of the virtues of liberal laws and methods. As a result it will give rise to a more conscious and heartfelt affection for the latter. The day will come, perhaps, when one can calmly look back upon the past and conclude that the difficult and painful ordeal that Italy is at present undergoing was a necessary stage. A necessary stage beyond which lies a renewal of national life, the completion of Italy’s political education, and a more intense sense of responsibility as a civilized people. Jeffrey T. Schnapp, ed., A Primer of Italian Fascism, trans. Maria G. Stampino and Jeffrey T. Schnapp (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 297-307. Reprinted by permission of University of Nebraska Press.

27 History as the Story of Liberty Benedetto Croce Although an early supporter of fascism who even voted in favor of the regime after the Matteotti crisis, Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) eventually came to represent an intellectual bulwark against fascism. Born in the Abruzzi region, Croce became synonymous with the cultural history of his adopted city, Naples. His international fame prevented the fascist regime from taking retaliatory action against him; at the same time, fascism could point to the Neapolitan philosopher and claim that intellectuals were “free in Italy. Croce was a Renaissance man, writing in the fields of philosophy, aesthetics, logic, literary criticism, history, and historiography. His review, La Critica, was an important voice in Italian culture. On 1 May 1925, he published the Manifesto of Anti-fascist Intellectuals and became a symbol, for two generations of anti-fascists. In his scholarly work of the 1930s, Croce was often implicitly critical of fascism. He insisted that fascism was not the logical culmination of Italian history but that history was the gradual unfolding of liberty. For many in Italy, reading Croce’s work was itself a form of anti-fascism. Hegel’s famous statement that history is the history of liberty was repeated without being altogether understood and then spread throughout Europe by Cousin, Michelet and other French writers. But Hegel and his disciples used it with the significance which we have criticized above, of a history of the first birth of liberty, of its growth, of its maturity and of its stable permanence in the definite era in which it is incapable of further development. (The formula was: Orient, Classic World, Germanic World = one free, some free, all free.) The statement is adduced in this place with a different intention and content, not in order to assign to history the

task of creating a liberty which did not exist in the past but will exist in the future, but to maintain that liberty is the eternal creator of history and itself the subject of every history. As such it is on the one hand the explanatory principle of the course of history, and on the other the moral ideal of humanity. Jubilant announcements, resigned admissions or desperate lamentations that liberty has now deserted the world are frequently heard nowadays; the ideal of liberty is said to have set on the horizon of history, in a sunset without promise of sunrise. Those who talk or write or print this deserve the pardon pronounced by Jesus, for they know not what they say. If they knew or reflected they would be aware that to assert that liberty is dead is the same as saying that life is dead, that its mainspring is broken. And as for the ideal, they would be greatly embarrassed if invited to state the ideal which has taken, or ever could take, the place of the ideal of liberty. Then they would find that there is no other like it, none which makes the heart of man, in his human quality, so beat, none other which responds better to the very law of life which is history; and that this calls for an ideal in which liberty is accepted and respected and so placed as to produce ever greater achievements. Certainly when we meet the legions of those who think or speak differently with these selfevident propositions, we are conscious that they may well be of the kind to raise laughter or derision about philosophers who seem to have tumbled on the earth from another world ignorant of what reality is, blind and deaf to its voice, to its cries, and to its hard features. Even if we omit to consider contemporary events and conditions in many countries, owing to which a liberal order which seemed to be the great and lasting achievement of the nineteenth century has crumbled, while in other countries the desire for this collapse is spreading, all history still gives evidence of an unquiet, uncertain and disordered liberty with brief intervals of unrest, rare and lightning moments of a happiness perceived rather than possessed, mere pauses in the tumult of oppressions, barbarian invasions, plunderings, secular and ecclesiastical tyrannies, wars between peoples, persecutions, exiles and gallows. With this prospect in view the statement that history is the history of liberty sounds like irony or, if it is seriously maintained, like stupidity. But philosophy is not there just to be overwhelmed by the kind of reality which is apprehended by unbalanced and confused imaginings. Thus philosophy, when it inquires and interprets, knowing well that the man who enslaves another wakes in him awareness of himself and enlivens him to seek for liberty, observes with serenity how periods of increased or reduced liberty follow upon each other and how a liberal order, the more it is established and undisputed, the more surely decays into habit, and thereby its vigilant self-awareness and readiness for defence is weakened, which opens the way for a “recourse,” as Vico termed it, to all of those things which seemed to have vanished from the world, and which themselves, in their turn, open a new “course.” Philosophy considers, for example, the democracies and the republics like those of Greece in the fourth century, or of Rome in the first in which liberty was still preserved in the institutional forms but no longer in the soul or the customs of the people, and then lost even those forms, much as a man who has not known how to help himself but has in vain for a time received ministrations of good advice is finally abandoned to the hard school of life. Or philosophy looks at Italy, exhausted and defeated, entombed by barbarians in all her

pompous Imperial array, rising again, as the poet said, “in her Tyrrhenian and Adriatic republics” like an agile sailor. Or philosophy contemplates the absolute monarchs who beat down the liberty of the barons and the clergy once they had become privileged, and superimposed on all men their own form of government, exercised by their own bureaucracy, and sustained by their own army, thus preparing a far greater and more useful participation of the people in political liberty. A Napoleon destroys a merely apparent and nominal liberty, he removes its appearance and its name, levels down the peoples under his rule and leaves those same people with a thirst for liberty and a new awareness of what it really was and a keenness to set up, as they did shortly afterwards in all Europe, institutions of liberty. Even in the darkest and crassest times liberty trembles in the lines of poets and affirms itself in the pages of thinkers and burns, solitary and magnificent, in some men who cannot be assimilated by the world around them, as Vittorio Alfieri discovered in eighteenth century grand-ducal Siena, where he found a friend, “freest of spirits,” born “in hard prison,” and abiding there “like a sleeping lion,” for whom he wrote the dialogue in his Virtue Unrecognized. Yes, to the eye of philosophy, whether the age is propitious or unfavourable, liberty appears as abiding purely and invincibly and consciously only in a few spirits; but these alone are those which count historically, just as great philosophers, great poets, great men and every kind of great work have a real message only to the few, even though crowds may acclaim and deify them, ever ready to abandon them in order noisily to acclaim other idols and to exercise, under whatever slogan or flag, a natural disposition for courtisanship and servility. And on account of this, and through experience and meditation, the philosopher thinks and tells himself that if in liberal times one enjoys the welcome illusion of belonging to a great company, while in illiberal times one has the opposite and unwelcome illusion of being alone or almost alone, the first optimistic view was surely illusory, but maybe the second pessimistic view was illusory also. He sees this and he sees so many other things and he draws the conclusion that if history is not an idyll, neither is it a “tragedy of horrors” but a drama in which all the actions, all the actors, and all the members of the chorus are, in the Aristotelian sense, “middling,” guilty-non-guilty, a mixture of good and bad, yet ruled always by a governing thought which is good and to which evil ends by acting as a stimulus and that this achievement is the work of liberty which always strives to re-establish and always does re-establish the social and political conditions of a more intense liberty. If anyone needs persuading that liberty cannot exist differently from the way it has lived and always will live in history, a perilous and fighting life, let him for a moment consider a world of liberty without obstacles, without menaces and without oppressions of any kind; immediately he will look away from this picture with horror as being something worse than death, an infinite boredom. Having said this, what is then the anguish that men feel for liberty that has been lost, the invocations, the lost hopes, the words of love and anger which come from the hearts of men in certain moments and in certain ages of history? We have already said it in examining a similar case: these are not philosophical nor historical truths, nor are they errors or dreams; they are movements of moral conscience; they are history in the making. Benedetto Croce, History as the Story of Liberty, trans. Sylvia Sprigge (New

York: Norton, 1941), 59-62. Copyright © Dino Buzzati Estate. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by permission of Dino Buzzati Estate. See also David D. Roberts, Benedetto Croce and the Uses of Historicism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).

28 The Political Prisoner Cesare Pavese Like Carlo Levi, Cesare Pavese was associated with the anti-fascist movement Justice and Liberty in Turin; also like Levi, Pavese was sentenced to confino in the Mezzogiorno and experienced the revelations of the northern intellectual coming into contact with the poor, rural peasantry. Here, though, the comparisons end; for if Levi was gregarious, extroverted, and outgoing, Pavese was painfully shy, reserved, and insecure. A major theme of his writing is his difficulty in establishing human relationships, especially with women. In order to flee the linguistic and aesthetic bombast of the fascist regime, Pavese sought refuge in American literature, translating the works of Emerson, Whitman, Anderson, and Steinbeck. The themes in Pavese’s writings—solitude, nature, nostalgia, violence, myth, and destiny— are all found here in The Political Prisoner. To protect the woman he loves, a member of the Italian Communist Party, Pavese is willing to suffer confino, only to discover later that the woman he sought to protect has betrayed him. As a writer and editor at the prestigious publishing house of Einaudi in Turin, Pavese was a major figure in postwar Italian culture but committed suicide in 1950. His diary, Il mestiere di vivere, was published posthumously in 1952. Stefano knew that there was nothing unusual about the place, the inhabitants lived their daily lives, the earth produced; there, as on any other coast, the sea was the sea. Stefano felt happy by the sea; on first arriving he imagined it as the fourth wall of his prison, a huge wall of color and coolness behind which he would be free to move about and forget the prison cell. From the very start he had filled his handkerchief with shells and pebbles. He had considered it a very human touch on the part of the maresciallo who examined his papers when the latter had replied to his request with the words, “Certainly, provided you can swim.”

For some days Stefano contemplated the hedges of fig-trees and the faded horizon as if they were strange realities; that they composed the invisible walls of his cell was the most natural part about them. Stefano had accepted straight away and without demur this shutting-in of his horizon which imprisonment implied; for him who had just left a cell it represented freedom. Furthermore, he had the feeling of this country-place around him, and the shy, inquisitive glances of the people seemed to him a guarantee of their friendliness. The arid fields, the vegetation, the sea with its changing moods, however, seemed strange to him at first. He could not take his eyes off them and they were continually in his mind. But as the memory of his real prison life faded, even these presences receded into the background. It was in fact on the sea-shore that Stefano was conscious of a different kind of depression one day when, having exchanged a few words with a youth who was drying himself in the sun, he had swum out to his daily rock which served as a buoy. “The villages are dirty here,” the youth had said, “they all leave here for more civilized parts. Well, there it is! You and I have to stick here.” He was a dark-skinned, muscular young man, a guardia di finanza from Central Italy, on tax-collecting duties. He spoke in clear-cut tones which Stefano found attractive and they often met at the local inn. Sitting on the rock with his chin resting on his knees, Stefano looked towards the desolate shore through half-closed eyes. The sun was beating down on it mercilessly. The guardia di finanza had compared his lot to his own, and Stefano’s sudden distress arose from a sense of humiliation. The rock, the small stretches of water provided no real escape from the seashore. There was no solitude unless he could get away from those squat houses, those cautious people collected there between the sea and the mountain. Especially if—as Stefano suspected—the guardia had applied the term “civilized” only out of politeness. In the morning Stefano went through the village—the long street parallel to the sea-shore— and looked at the low roofs and the clear sky while the inhabitants eyed him from their doorsteps. Some of the houses had two floors, and the painted facades had been bleached by the sea air; an occasional piece of foliage behind a wall brought back memories. Between one house and the next, he could catch a glimpse of the sea, and each of these gaps took Stefano by surprise like an unexpected friend. The gloomy, cave-like entrances under the low doors, the dark faces, the reserve of the women even when they came out into the street to empty their earthenware pots made a contrast with the bright atmosphere outside that increased Stefano’s feeling of isolation. His stroll came to an end under the doorway of an inn where he went so that he could sit down and enjoy his freedom until it was warm enough for him to go and have his bath. At first Stefano passed many sleepless nights in his tumble-down house because it was at night that the strangeness of the day assailed him, causing a tingling in his blood. In the dark the murmur of the sea became a thundering roar, the cool breeze a high wind, the recollection of people’s faces a torment. The whole of the nocturnal countryside seemed to hurl itself upon his extended body. When he woke up again the sun brought him peace.

Stefano would sit at his door in the sunlight, watching as it were for his liberty, as if he left his prison every morning. Sometimes customers entered the inn whom he found disturbing. At various times in the day the maresciallo of the carabinieri cycled past. The motionless road, gradually making its way southward, strode past Stefano of its own accord; there was no need to follow it. He always had a book with him which he held in front of him and dipped into now and again. It gave him pleasure to greet and be greeted by familiar faces. The guardia di finanza who was taking his coffee at the counter gave him a courteous “good day.” “You’re a sedentary man,” he said with a touch of sarcasm, “whenever I see you, you are always sitting down either at table or on the rock. Your world doesn’t extend very far!” “True enough; my movements are limited too,” replied Stefano, “and I come from a great distance away.” The guardia laughed. “They have told me about your case. The maresciallo is certainly a stickler but he realizes the sort of person he is dealing with. He even lets you sit in the inn where you have no right to be.” Stefano was not always sure when the guardia was joking, and he seemed to hear the uniform behind those clear accents. A plumpish young man with vivacious eyes stopped at the door listening to them. Suddenly he said, “Eh, yellow stripes, can’t you see that the engineer is sorry for you and that you are boring him?” The guardia exchanged a smile with Stefano. “In that case you are irritation number three.” They all exchanged glances, mollified or amused as the case might be; but Stefano felt the joke was beyond him and tried to weigh and assess the glances they gave him. He realized that to break down the barrier he only needed to get to know the capricious laws governing this light-hearted banter and he could join in himself. Everybody in the place talked in this mocking way with a similar exchange of knowing looks. Other people with nothing special to do came in, and the game extended. The plump youth whose name was Gaetano Fenoaltea was the expert at it, and as he lived directly opposite the inn in the shop which, along with the other property round about, belonged to his father, he could stroll across without technically abandoning his work. These idle folk were astonished that Stefano should go down to the seashore every day, though now and again some would walk there with him. They had even drawn his attention to the convenient rock. But they did so to keep him company or just for a whim. They could not understand his habit; it seemed childish to them. They could swim and were more familiar with the water than he, having played in it as boys, but for them the sea meant nothing or was merely somewhere where you could relax. The only one who spoke of it seriously was the young shopkeeper, who asked him whether he had ever spent seasons on the Riviera before the last “showdown.” And although Stefano went out at dawn certain mornings and strolled alone along the wet sands to look at the sea, he himself began to dread the solitude when he heard at

the restaurant that no one was coming down that day, and he would limit his time there to a bath and an odd half-hour. When they met in front of the inn, he and the plump youth would be content just to nod a greeting for Gaetano preferred to show himself when a good company was gathered inside. On such occasions he was able, without any direct conversation with him and by joking with the others, to isolate Stefano in a sphere of reserve. After a few days he became loquacious with him too. He took his arm affectionately and said, “Close your book, engineer, we don’t have school here. You’re on holiday. Show these lads the stuff you Northern Italians are made of.” This taking of his arm was always so unexpected that it reminded Stefano of the time when in his adolescent day, with beating heart, he had passed women in the street. He did not find it difficult to resist this effusiveness especially as it embarrassed him in front of other people. During these early days Stefano had felt too much under the scrutiny of those glances to accept his friendliness in a natural way. But Gaetano’s amiable expression was a guarantee of the others in the inn, and although he could eye you coldly when he wanted, his imperious manner had the artlessness that usually accompanies it. It was therefore of him that Stefano inquired if there were any girls round about, and if so, why there were none to be seen on the beach. Slightly embarrassed, Gaetano explained that they bathed in a place set apart on the other side of the shore, and when Stefano smiled derisively, he admitted that they did not often leave their houses. “But there are some?” insisted Stefano. “I should say!” replied Gaetano beaming. “Our womenfolk grow old early in life but are all the prettier in their youth. They have a dazzling beauty that outshines the sun and disarms men’s eyes. They are real ladies, our girls. That is why we keep them shut up.” “We don’t have any of these hot glances where I come from!” said Stefano calmly. “You have your work, we have love.” Stefano lacked the curiosity to go to the river to spy on the bathers. He accepted the tacit law of the segregation of the sexes as he accepted everything else. His life was bounded by imaginary walls of air. But he remained unconvinced that these lads made love. Possibly behind the permanently closed shutters of these houses some of the beds had a slight acquaintance with love, and a few brides enjoyed their heyday. But not these boys. Stefano had indeed surprised conversations about “escapes” into the town—not invariably on the part of bachelors—and allusions to farm wenches, held in such contempt that you could discuss them openly. This lack of female company depressed him most at dusk. He would relinquish his corner in the house and sit down on a heap of stones to watch the passers-by. The semi-darkness was illuminated by lights, shutters were flung open to the cool of the evening. There was a faint rustle and a sound of whispering as people went by, sometimes in chattering groups. There were also isolated bunches of more brightly dressed young women. They did not venture far

and were soon on their way back again into the village. There were no couples to be seen. When any of the groups passed each other, they exchanged cursory glances. Stefano liked this reserve; he was not allowed to leave his lodging after sundown, and more than the rest of the inhabitants he favored the night and the forgotten solitude of the darkness. So much indeed had he forgotten how gentle it was that a puff of wind, the sound of a footstep, the vast shadow of the mountain peak against the pale sky was enough to make him drop his cheek on his shoulder as if a friendly hand was caressing him. As the darkness cut off his horizon, he was conscious of an enlarged field of freedom for his thoughts. He was always alone at this time and he also spent the larger part of the afternoon in solitude. They played cards at the inn during the afternoon, and if Stefano joined in, he gradually grew restless and felt the urge to go out. Sometimes it would be as far as the seashore, but this bathing naked and alone in the green Mediterranean depressed him and caused him to dress hurriedly in the already chilling air. He would then leave the village which seemed too small. The hovels, the hillside rocks, the leafy hedges once more turned in a lair of a sordid people with prying eyes and hostile smiles. He walked away from the village along the wide road which led through olive groves to meadows bordering the sea. He strode along purposefully, wishing the time away, hoping something might happen. Seeing the level horizon stretch before him, he felt as if he must walk on to infinity. The village disappeared behind the hill and the surrounding mountains rose and interrupted the skyline. Stefano did not go far. The road was virtually a raised terrace which allowed a view of the desolate seashore and the empty countryside. In the distance where the road turned, there were signs of green foliage, but halfway along Stefano stopped and looked all around him. Everything was gray and unfriendly between the air above him and the distant hills. Now and again, he would catch sight of a peasant in the fields or he would see a figure crouching below the terrace road. Stefano who had been walking along with bitterness in his heart, then felt a peace that was almost painful, a kind of mournful sadness, and slowly he retraced his footsteps home. Cesare Pavese, The Political Prisoner; translated by W.J. Strachan (London: Owen, 1955), 7-14. Reprinted by permission of Peter Owen Publishers.

29 What Is Man? Antonio Gramsci Born into a petit bourgeois family in Sardegna, Gramsci (1891-1937) won a scholarship to attend the University of Turin. There he collaborated with Palmiro Togliatti, Angelo Tasca, and Umberto Terracini (all later members of the Italian Communist Party [PCI]) on the review, L’Ordine nuovo. Gramsci advocated a radical transformation of Italian society through the factory council movement and was the leading light of the PCI when it was formed in 1921. He is recognized as having contributed to the most fundamental and important analysis of Marxism in western Europe. Arrested notwithstanding his parliamentary immunity, he was tried and sentenced to twenty years in prison. There he reflected on Marxism, humanism, idealist philosophy, the role of intellectuals, and the possibilities of a socialist transformation of society, filling numerous notebooks with his thoughts. The Quaderni del carcere (Prison Notebooks), which attempted to synthesize the principles of Marxism with the humanistic tradition of the West, were poblished after the war and were essential catalysts for the renewal of Italian intellectual, cultural, and political life. Here, Gramsci reflects on the eternal question of philosophy: What is man? This is the primary and principal question that philosophy asks. How is it to be answered? The definition can be found in man himself, that is, in each individual man. But is it correct? In every individual man one can discover what every “individual man” is. But we are not interested in what every individual man is, which then comes to mean what every individual man is at every individual moment. Reflecting on it, we can see that in putting the question “what is man?” what we mean is: what can man become? That is, can man dominate his own destiny, can he “make himself,” can he create his own life? We maintain therefore that man is a process, and, more exactly, the process of his actions. If you think about it, the question itself

“what is man?” is not an abstract or “objective” question. It is born of our reflection about ourselves and about others, and we want to know, in relation to what we have thought and seen, what we are and what we can become; whether we really are, and if so to what extent, “makers of our own selves,” of our life and of our destiny. And we want to know this “today,” in the given conditions of today, the conditions of our daily life, not of any life or any man. The question is born and receives its content from special, that is, specific ways of considering life and man. The most important of these is religion, and a specific religion, which is Catholicism. In reality, when we ask ourselves “what is man?,” what importance do his will and his concrete activity have in creating himself and the life he lives? What we mean is: Is Catholicism a correct conception of the world and of life? As Catholics, making Catholicism a norm of life, are we making a mistake or are we right? Everyone has a vague intuitive feeling that when they make Catholicism a norm of life, they are making a mistake, to such an extent that nobody attaches himself to Catholicism as a norm of life, even when calling himself a Catholic. An integral Catholic, one, that is, who applied the Catholic norms in every act of his life, would seem a monster. Which, when you come to think about it, is the severest and most peremptory criticism of Catholicism itself. Catholics would say that no other conception is followed punctiliously either, and they would be right. But all this shows is that there does not exist, historically, a way of seeing things and of acting which is equal for all men, no more no less. It is not a reason in favour of Catholicism, although for centuries the Catholic way of seeing things and of acting has been organised around this very end, which has not been the case with any other religion possessed of the same means, of the same systematic spirit, of the same continuity and centralisation. From the “philosophical” point of view, what is unsatisfactory in Catholicism is the fact that, in spite of everything, it insists on putting the cause of evil in the individual man himself, or in other words that it conceives of man as a defined and limited individual. It could be said of all hitherto existing philosophies that they reproduce this position of Catholicism, that they conceive of man as an individual limited to his own individuality and of the spirit as being this individuality. It is on this point that it is necessary to reform the concept of man. I mean that one must conceive of man as a series of active relationships (a process) in which individuality, though perhaps the most important, is not, however, the only element to be taken into account. The humanity which is reflected in each individuality is composed of various elements: 1. the individual; 2. other men; 3. the natural world. But the latter two elements are not as simple as they might appear. The individual does not enter into relations with other men by juxtaposition, but organically, in as much, that is, as he belongs to organic entities which range from the simplest to the most complex. Thus man does not enter into relations with the natural world just by being himself part of the natural world, but actively, by means of work and technique. Further: these relations are not mechanical. They are active and conscious. They correspond to the greater or lesser degree of understanding that each man has of them. So one could say that each one of us changes himself, modifies himself to the extent that he changes and modifies the complex relations of which he is the hub. In this sense the real philosopher is, and cannot be other than, the politician, the active man who modifies the environment, understanding by environment the ensemble of relations which each of us enters to take part in. If one’s own

individuality is the ensemble of these relations, to create one’s personality means to acquire consciousness of them and to modify one’s own personality means to modify the ensemble of these relations. But these relations, as we have said, are not simple. Some are necessary, others are voluntary. Further, to be conscious of them, to whatever degree of profundity (that is, to know, in varying degrees, how to modify them) already modifies them. Even the necessary relations, in so far as they are known to be necessary, take on a different aspect and importance. In this sense, knowledge is power. But the problem is complex in another way as well. It is not enough to know the ensemble of relations as they exist at any given time as a given system. They must be known genetically, in the movement of their formation. For each individual is the synthesis not only of existing relations, but of the history of these relations. He is a precis of all the past. It will be said that what each individual can change is very little, considering his strength. This is true up to a point. But when the individual can associate himself with all the other individuals who want the same changes, and if the changes wanted are rational, the individual can be multiplied an impressive number of times and can obtain a change which is far more radical than at first sight ever seemed possible. The “societies” in which a single individual can take part are very numerous, more than would appear. It is through these “societies” that the individual belongs to the human race. Thus the ways in which the single individual enters into relation with nature are many and complex, since by technique one should understand not only the ensemble of scientific ideas applied industrially (which is the normal meaning of the word) but also the “mental” instruments, philosophical knowledge. That man cannot be conceived other than as living in society is a commonplace. But not all the necessary consequences have been drawn from this, even on an individual level. That a specific human society presupposes a specific “society of things,” and that human society is possible only in so far as there exists a specific society of things, is also a commonplace. It is true that up to now the significance attributed to these supra-individual organisms (both the societas hominum and the societas rerum) has been mechanistic and determinist: hence the reaction against it. It is necessary to elaborate a doctrine in which these relations are seen as active and in movement, establishing quite clearly that the source of this activity is the consciousness of the individual man who knows, wishes, admires, creates (in so far as he does know, wish, admire, create, etc.) and conceives of himself not as isolated but rich in the possibilities offered him by other men and by the society of things of which he cannot help having a certain knowledge. Just as every man is a philosopher, every man is a man of science (etc.). Taken in itself, Feuerbach’s assertion “Man is what he eats” can be interpreted in various ways. Crude and stupid interpretation: man is at any time what he eats materially, i.e. food has an immediate and determining influence on the way of thinking. Recall Amadeo [Bordiga]’s remark to the effect that if one knew what a man had eaten before making a speech, for example, one would be in a better position to interpret the speech itself. A childish remark, and not even in conformity with positive scientific data, because the brain is not nourished on

beans and truffles but rather the food manages to reconstitute the molecules of the brain once it has been turned into homogeneous and assimilable substances, which have potentially the “same nature,” as the molecules of the brain. If this assertion were true, then the determining matrix of history would be the kitchen and revolutions would coincide with radical changes in the diet of the masses. Historically the contrary is true. It is revolutions and the complex development of history which have modified diet and created the successive “tastes” in the choice of food. It wasn’t the regular sowing of wheat that brought nomadism to an end, but vice versa. The emergence of conditions hostile to nomadism provided an impetus to regular sowing. On the other hand it is also true that “man is what he eats,” in so far as diet is one of the expressions of social relations taken as a whole, and every social group has its own basic form of diet. But one might equally well say that “man is his clothing,” “man is his housing” or “man is his particular way of reproducing himself, that is, his family.” For, together with diet, housing, clothing and reproduction are among the elements of social life in which social relations as a whole are manifested in the most evident and widespread (i.e. mass) fashion. The problem of what is man is always therefore the so-called problem of “human nature” or that of so-called “man in general.” It is thus an attempt to create a science of man (a philosophy) which starts from an initially “unitary” concept, from an abstraction in which everything that is “human” can be contained. But is the “human” a starting-point or a point of arrival, as a concept and as a unitary fact? Or might not the whole attempt, in so far as it posits the human as a starting-point, be a “theological” or “metaphysical” residue? Philosophy cannot be reduced to a naturalistic “anthropology”: the nature of the human species is not given by the “biological” nature of man. The differences in man which count in history are not the biological—race, shape of the cranium, colour of skin, etc. (For it is to these that the affirmation “man is what he eats” can be reduced—he eats wheat in Europe, rice in Asia, etc.—and it could indeed be further reduced to the affirmation “man is the country where he lives,” since most of diet is in general connected with the land inhabited.) Nor has “biological unity” ever counted for very much in history: man is the animal which has eaten himself precisely when he was nearest to the “state of nature” and when he could not artificially multiply the production of natural goods. Nor yet have the “faculty of reason” or “the mind” created unity, and they cannot be recognised as a “unitary” fact as they represent a purely formal and categorical concept. It is not “thought” but what people really think that unites or differentiates mankind. That “human nature” is the “complex of social relations” is the most satisfactory answer, because it includes the idea of becoming (man “becomes,” he changes continuously with the changing of social relations) and because it denies “man in general.” Indeed social relations are expressed by various groups of men which each presuppose the others and whose unity is dialectical, not formal. Man is aristocratic in so far as man is a serf, etc. One could also say that the nature of man is “history” and, in this sense, given history as equal to spirit, that the nature of man is spirit if one gives to history precisely this significance of “becoming” which takes place in a “concordia discors” [discordant concord] which does not start from unity, but

contains in itself the reasons for a possible unity. For this reason “human nature” cannot be located in any particular man but in the entire history of the human species (and the fact that we use the word “species,” which is a naturalistic word, is itself significant) while in each single individual there are to be found characteristics which are put in relief by being in contradiction with the characteristics of others. Both the conception of “spirit” found in traditional philosophy and that of “human nature” found in biology should be explained as “scientific utopias” which took the place of the greater utopia of a human nature to be sought for in God (and in men as sons of God) and they serve to indicate the continual travail of history, an aspiration of a rational and sentimental kind, etc. It is also true that both the religions which affirm the quality of man as the sons of God and the philosophies which affirm the equality of man as participants in the faculty of reason have been expressions of complex revolutionary movements (respectively the transformation of the classical world and the transformation of the medieval world) which laid the most powerful links of the chain of historical development. The idea that the Hegelian dialectic has been the last reflection of these great historical nexuses, and that the dialectic, from being the expression of social contradictions, a pure conceptual dialectic, would appear to be at the root of those recent philosophies, like that of Croce, which have a utopistic basis. In history real “equality,” that is the degree of “spirituality” reached by the historical process of “human nature” is to be identified in the system of “private and public” “explicit and implicit” associations whose threads are knotted together in the “State” and in the world political system. We are dealing here with “equalities” experienced as such between the members of an association, and “inequalities” experienced between one association and another. These are equalities and inequalities which are valid in so far as people, individually or as a group, are conscious of them. In this way we arrive also at the equality of, or equation between, “philosophy and politics,” thought and action, that is, at a philosophy of praxis. Everything is political, even philosophy or philosophies (cf. the notes on the character of ideologies) and the only “philosophy” is history in action, that is, life itself. It is in this sense that one can interpret the thesis of the German proletariat as the heir of classical German philosophy—and one can affirm that the theorisation and realisation of hegemony carried out by Ilich [Lenin] was also a great “metaphysical” event. Antonio, Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International, 1971), 351-57. Reprinted by permission of International Publishers,. See also John M. Cammett, Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of the Italian Communist Party (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1967); Dante Germino, Antonio Gramsci: Architect of a New Politics (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990); Renate Holub, Antonio Gramsci: Beyond Marxism and Postmodernism (New York: Routledge, 1992).

30 The Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution Marla Stone Italian fascism can be seen as a regime of spectacle. Some of this was crude and today even laughable: images of fascist officials running beside the Duce, diving through hoops of fire; or Mussolini himself racing automobiles, riding horses, wrestling with a lion cub or— stripped bare to the waist—harvesting wheat in the fields alongside peasants. But the regime often used more sophisticated forms of propaganda and spectacle, as shown here by Marla Stone in a study of the tenth anniversary celebrations of the March on Rome in 1932. Fascist patronage at mass exhibitions with a political, social or economic theme differed considerably from that at fine arts exhibitions. While a variety of styles prevailed in both forms, the dictatorship encouraged greater experimentation with the form of theme exhibition. The links between art exhibitions and preexisting elites and art forms limited Fascism’s ability and desire to alter them, as the regime sought to appropriate aspects of elite culture. As Fascist intervention in the Venice Biennale reveals, only in the late 1930s, when it rejected inherited patronage styles, did the dictatorship move public art to the center of official art exhibitions. In contrast, political exhibitions, as recently developed forms, offered the government and the party an opportunity to create a uniquely Fascist intersection of art and propaganda. While Fascist Italy did not invent the theme or political exhibition, it adopted it readily, taking the form in new directions and giving it its most diffused exposure to date. The design aspects of the political exhibition had been developed by the European interwar avant-gardes in the process of experimenting with industrial design and advertising. German designers at the Bauhaus and Soviet constructivists experimented in the late 1920s with the possibilities of bringing “new spatial and technical solutions” to exhibition design. Walter Gropius and Gustav Moholy-Nagy at the Bauhaus and El Lissitzky and Konstantin Melnikov in Moscow evolved techniques of “spatial interpenetration,” using photomontage and constructivist symbolism to give exhibition design a modern, tactile character. The larger European (and Italian) art world

came into contact with avant-garde exhibition design at a number of trade and industrial exhibitions in the late 1920s, especially Lissitzky’s “Press Pavilion” at the 1928 Cologne Exhibition, and Gropius’s and Breuer’s Werkbund section at the 1930 Paris Decorative Arts Exposition.

A fascist propaganda poster promoting the idea of Libya as a tourist destination. (Courtesy of Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.) The Fascist regime celebrated its anniversary of ten years in power with a massive exhibition: the Mostra della rivoluzione fascista, an official interpretation of the March on Rome and the history preceding it. The success of the 1932 exhibition launched a range of similar shows that focused on political, social, or economic issues. In the course of the 1930s, the autarchy policy, the League of Nations Sanctions against Italy, the Nazi-Fascist Alliance, and the Racial Laws all found expression in exhibitions. While political developments catalyzed the most extravagant shows, the regime also expressed its social and economic policies through mass exhibitions. The Mostra dell‘istruzione tecnica (Exhibition of Technical Education) (1936) celebrated Fascism’s advances and plans for further growth. The demographic campaign of the 1930s reappeared in a national exhibition on infant health care, the Mostra delle colonie estive e assistenza all’infanzia (Exhibition of Summer Camps and Assistance to Children) (1937). Theme exhibitions also reinforced the dictatorship’s relationship with industry at various moments during the 1930s. For example, the joint interest of government and business in expanding the aeronautics industry led to the promotion of the Mostra aeronautica (Aeronautics Exhibition) in Milan in 1934. Official support for the nascent Italian fashion industry stimulated the birth of the annual Mostra della moda (Fashion Exhibition), while government and business interest in the development of radio technology catalyzed the establishment of an annual Mostra dell radio (Exhihi-tion of the Radio); the regime’s promotion of an Italian-led Mediterranean economic sphere underwrote the expansion of the Fiera del Levante (Fair of the Levant) after 1930. Thus, during the 1930s, with all these topics providing a wide variety of occasions for official cultural events, the Fascist regime patronized and advanced a successful mass exhibition formula. This formula attracted the talents of many of the nation’s best artists and architects. These exhibitions were complicated texts, blending propaganda with entertainment, didactic and reductive narratives with more amhiguous and complex ones. The exhibitions were part of Fascism’s intermittent rejection of preexisting cultural standards, its attempt to transform the cultural institutions of Liberal Italy and its search for forms it could declare uniquely Fascist. In its inheritance of the futurist antipathy toward museums, Fascism sought an active, temporary, and innovative exhibition format and a new kind of visual communication. The mass, theme exhibitions shared formal commonalities that allowed specifically Fascist characteristics and innovations to emerge. The Fascist political or theme exhibition genre can be defined by a six characteristics: (1) the use of art to aestheticize politics; (2) the application of specifically avant-garde art, architecture, and design; (3) the collapsing of the space between the spectator, the artifact/document, and the art; (4) the employment of a repeated exhibition itinerary or dramatic path; (5) a volatile combination of entertainment, tourism, and propaganda; and (6) a discourse of Italian national identity and culture and its conflation with Fascism. The sum total of these parts was a Fascist Gesamtkunstwerk of art, drama,

propaganda, and entertainment.... On the morning of October 28, 1932, the tenth anniversary of the Fascist assumption of power, Benito Mussolini inaugurated the most enduring cultural event of the Fascist dictatorship. As the Duce reviewed the assembled honor guards and passed the cheering crowds to open the doors of the Mostra della rivoluzione fascista (Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution), Fascism invited Italians and foreigners alike to experience and participate in the regime’s act of self-representation. The Mostra della rivoluzione fascista recreated through a mélange of art, documentation, relics, and historical simulations the years 1914 to 1922, as interpreted by Fascism after ten years in power. The exhibition’s twenty-three rooms focused on each year from the beginning of World War I until October 1922 and crescendoed in the Sala del Duce (Room of the Duce) and the Sacrario dei martiti (Chapel of the Martyrs). While the show’s text was the past—1914 to 1922—the context was the future. The Mostra’s celebration and evocation of the history and rise to power of Fascism took place on the decennial of that takeover ... the regime became increasingly involved after 1929 in cultural production and institutions. These years witnessed Fascism’s consensus-building programs, such as the draining of the Pontine marshes, the construction of the Fascist “new towns,” the wars on tuberculosis and infant mortality. The year 1932 also marked the beginning of Achille Starace’s tenure as secretary of the National Fascist Party. Starace vastly opened up party membership and expanded the party’s mass organizations. In this context, the Mostra della rivoluzione fascista constituted a referendum on Fascism to date. The regime, in presenting its own story and exposing as many citizens as possible to it, sought validation for its rule as it entered a second decade in power. The popular and critical success of the Mostra della rivoluzione fascista and its continued presence throughout the Fascist era furnishes a case study for shifts in Fascist culture and clues to an understanding of public responses to that culture. How did the National Fascist Party organize a propaganda event that both met its interest in political legitimation and responded to the cultural tastes of a broad cross section of the Italian public? The answer discloses itself in layers: (1) the iconographic and aesthetic, (2) the discursive, and (3) the promotional. Examination of the mechanism of aesthetics, an open-ended nationalist-Italianist discourse, and mass culture reveals the ways in which Fascism produced a propaganda exhibition that pleased spectators and critics alike, while also giving the regime the popular consensus it sought. The Mostra’s triumph signified the birth of a genre that the regime would expand during the remainder of the decade. This Fascist-developed mass exhibition genre, as noted in the preceding section, blended aesthetics and artifacts. Through the transformation of documents into works of art, Fascism spiritualized history and politics, providing spectators with intensely emotionalized propaganda. The Mostra della rivoluzione fascista, soon after its opening, became a multimedia event and a de riguer cultural experience. With a sophisticated use of aesthetics and mass cultural organization, the regime filled a gap left by the Liberal parliamentary governments and offered Italians an event of national proportions. Assessment of the multifaceted dynamic of mass culture, aesthetics, and Fascist rhetoric and

symbolism is best approached through analysis of the creation, reading, and the organization of spectatorship at the exhibition. As the cultural event chosen to depict Fascism’s selfunderstanding and to render visually its present and future, the Mostra delta rivoluzione fascista is central to an understanding of the cultural formula advanced by Fascism in the early 1930s and abandoned by it at the end of the decade. Marla Stone, The Patron State: Culture and Politics in Fascist Italy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998), 128-34. Copyright © 1998 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press. See also Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922-194 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), and Mabel Berezin, Making the Fascist Self: The Political Culture of Interwar Italy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997).

31 Grace Grazia Deledda Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926, Grazia Deledda (1871-1936) was born in the Sardinian town of Nuoro. As part of the Mezzogiorno, Sardinia was isolated from modernity, especially developments in politics, technology, and culture. (At Deledda’s birth a decade after Italian unification, Nuoro had neither a railroad nor a telegraph service.) In a rigidly hierarchical and patriarchal society, there were few avenues for the free expression and development of women. In a land of 95 percent illiteracy, Deledda was fortunate to have received a third grade education (the highest level available to girls). Her family granted her a private tutor and by age fifteen, Deledda was writing short stories. Her work combines a respect for the traditional folkways and culture of Sardinia with a desire to emancipate women (she supported a woman’s right to vote and divorce). At a time when fascism was attempting to reinforce a patriarchal conception of “womanhood, ” she managed to publish ten novels and many short stories that contained a subtle critique of fascist gender models. Her autobiography, Cosima, was published a year after her death. My first small literary successes, like some great successes, also brought deep disappointments. My family prohibited me from writing, since my future was supposed to be quite different from the kind I dreamed about; it was supposed to be a future devoted entirely to home life, to household chores, bare reality, raising a large family. So long as I wrote children’s stories, no one bothered much. But when the love stories started—with nighttime rendezvous, kisses, and sweet, compromising words—the persecution became relentless, from all my family, and was backed up by outsiders, who were the most

frightening and dangerous of all. A well-bred girl can’t write about these things unless she is writing from experience or as a private outlet; if she somehow does arouse the curiosity of the young men in the district, not one of them will think of asking her to many him. It has always been the same the whole world over. But this wasn’t what troubled me. The arrows that were aimed straight at me and that wounded me most deeply came from the local literary critics. I especially remember a long, anonymous letter, written on official paper—like a legal bill of indictment—which arrived with perfect cruelty one beautiful September morning, just as we were about to leave for a holiday in the country. The holiday would last nine days, at the church of the Madonna of Valverde, in that Valverde basin, so dear to me because it was the wild cradle where my first dreams of art and love were fostered. We slept—if you could call it sleeping, since much of the night was spent outside, by the light of the fires, dancing to accordion music—in small lean-tos built against the outside walls of the church. During the day, our house was the green clearing with its small stream, with stones for chairs, and the shade of the trees for awnings. I carried the anonymous letter with me, like a hair shirt meant to remind me, amid earthly joys, of the atonement to come. Like the mystical outlaw who, according to tradition, founded the Valverde church, I hid myself among the rocks and lentisk plants to reread the charges that tore my work to shreds, as if it were that of a criminal. The indictment’s most precise and relentless blows were aimed at errors of grammar. But this wasn’t what caused me the most pain; the pain that was killing me was seeing my poor creatures torn to shreds and trampled. Not even one survived the slaughter, and I was there with them, the most mistreated and broken. And the tragic nature of my misfortune took on yet darker tones due to the fact that the letter, it was said, had been written by a woman. But, as it happened, another woman soon did me justice. As in those dreams that erase time and distance, but are bathed in the light of mysterious anguish that illuminates dreams, making the drowsy soul aware of the futility of the vision, I can see myself again perched on the ridge overlooking the stony valley, not far from some hollowed-out rocks, with low openings too small to enter. They are the domus de janas, famous megalithic monuments, prehistoric dwellings or tombs, where, as local legend has it, live little fairies—generous or evil, as the case may be. The sky to the west, above the valley’s far side, is deep crimson, and against this reflection the lentisk leaves look like a multitude of little flames. Like an exile who gazes at the horizon, thinking ahout his lost country, I sit on a boulder and think that my literary career is obviously finished. My life is now like that solitary valley, without roads, without gardens, beneath a passionate light that will not be released except in

the darkness of death. I too will be like the lentisk, which hides the power of fire in its roots, and oil for lamps and ointments in its wild fruit from all but the humble who know its secret. But it’s not enough to live only for the poor, when you’re sixteen years old, and believe you have the right to be in the sun, not planted on the ground. It’s injustice itself that weighs upon the poor; the injustice that, while helping a great man already at the pinnacle of human knowledge rise still higher, knocks down people with no education. “Injustice....” A voice has answered my thoughts, as if it were a mysterious echo within me. But no. The voice really belongs to someone else. Almost frightened, I turn around and see a tiny, old woman all dressed in black standing behind me, looking like one of the jonas that live in the rock houses. Even her rosary is black. But two radiant objects brighten her appearance: a large, silver filigree medal with two sapphires, which hangs from the rosary, and her small face, which resembles the medal. Time has worn her face and the medal alike, leaving them with the same bright splendor. The old woman’s eyes seem to have gotten their clear blue sparkle from looking at the two antique sapphires. Now, her eyes are fixed upon me, and seem to have a new light, a sheen overlying the brilliance that was there before: the light of faith. The old woman sits down on the ground, by my feet. Running her fingers over her rosary beads, as if she were kneeling before the Madonna of Valverde, she begins to tell me her request. “It’s because of injustice that I had to find you, my dear girl. I came here to talk with you, because over there, where everybody is staying, too many spiteful people could over hear us. Why are you looking at me like that? Don’t you know who I am?” Yes, now I recognize her. She’s the little old woman who brought along a basket with everything she would need for sleeping and eating—the most important thing of all, the coffeepot. She passes the nine days of the celebration in a corner of the small room we were given to cook our meals. She continued: “They say you know how to write better than lawyers do. Even the Queen reads your writing. It’s a gift that God has given to you, and you must use it to help the poor. I need you to write a petition for me. I’ll buy the paper needed for a legal document, even if it costs one lira. Will you do me this favor?” “What is the petition for?” She looked at me, surprised that I alone was unaware of her troubles. “What? You don’t know about it? My son, Sebastiano, my only child, was wrongly condemned to twenty years of prison, for a crime he didn’t commit.”

Stories like this always begin the same way, so I replied, “Everyone says that....” But the little mother’s face clouded over in an expression of such anguish that it upset me too. “When I’m the one who tells you that Sebastiano is innocent, you have to believe me. And if you don’t, what good is your talent?” At first, I was flattered by her remark, then it made me think, it’s true, lofty intelligence can penetrate and reveal the mystery of human events better than a serious judicial inquiry, however conscientious. So I let the little old woman tell the long and complicated story of her Sebastiano. The beginning of the tragic story dated all the way back to his childhood and a tame hare he’d stolen from the pen next to his father’s. The owner of the hare, who was also a young boy, the only child of the herdsman living next to them, had sworn he would get even. Many years went by and Sebastiano, already a man of thirty, became engaged and was to be married. But the night before the wedding, the bride-tobe announced that she wasn’t going to keep her promise to marry him. No one ever found out why. It was said that someone had given her a drink of the water of oblivion, which made her forget her love for Sebastiano, and she wouldn’t marry a man she didn’t love. Sebastiano resigned himself to her repeated refusals. After all, there are plenty of girls to marry in all corners of the world, and they’ll jump out at the shake of a stick. But then something horrible happened. One night, in the pen belonging to the girl’s father, who was a herdsman too, ten cows were hamstrung while he was away. Since the hired hand watching over the herd resisted and cried out, he was stabbed to death. “That night,” the little mother insists, “my Sebastiano was sleeping at home by the fireside. Well, at dawn’s light, he and I both heard a strange cry, piercing the walls around our house like the tip of a dagger. It was the scream of our neighbor from the adjoining fold—the hare’s owner. Had he taken advantage of the situation, making it look like my son was guilty to get his revenge? We never knew for sure, except in our hearts. The fact is, Sebastiano was taken away and found guilty. And that night he had slept by the fireside, innocent as the fire itself.” Whether it was real or imagined, I didn’t try to check the mother’s version of what happened. Nor did I have any way to do so. It was as if I really were a lawyer, who, just to have a compelling case, accepts it on good faith, giving himself over completely to the side that can win him success. I wanted this success, so that I could redeem myself, most of all, in my own eyes. “We’ll write the petition. But whom should we write it to?” “You’re asking me, dear girl? To the Queen, of course.” The sweet old woman said this as if I were about to write a private letter to a close aunt of mine, or maybe to my mother. Meanwhile, the name of the great, radiant Queen, shining high above our hearts like the

morning star, sent shivers through my soul. And I was caught in the circle of faith and fantasy of the little woman who blindly believed in the magical power of the written word, a power nonetheless that can truly span centuries and infinite spaces, and reach from the beggar to the king, if it springs from the pure of heart. So with the written word I’ll speak to our Queen. Through my silent voice she will hear the little mother’s heart speak, and justice will be done. If only I had the petition here in front of me! With its innocent breath of humanity, it would take the place of all these insignificant pages that seem as if they were a story, yet aren’t one. Or perhaps the petition was a literary document transformed and revived by deeply stirred memory to live a fuller life? It’s impossible to say. I know that it was written in beautiful handwriting, in the mother’s name, and signed with her mark—a small shaky cross, a meaningful image of the mother herself, of her faith, of her pain. I also wrote the address: To Her Majesty Margherita of Savoia Queen of Italy Rome Time went by, and there was no news. The mother always kept hoping. I didn’t think about it any more, happy that I had regained my self-confidence. One day Sebastiano, who still had three years to serve, was set free by an amnesty. His mother came to see me, beaming as she had that day among the red lentisk plants of Valverde. “See! The Queen granted the petition for mercy!” I tried to tell her otherwise, but without any success. If the Queen hadn’t spoken, she kept insisting, the amnesty decree wouldn’t have set Sebastiano free. As a sign of gratitude she offered me a keepsake that I have to this day: a little traveling flask, made from a small squash finely adorned with figures all around it—a work of art, of patience, of waiting, that the condemned man had made in prison. From Unspeakable Women: Selected Short Stories Written by Italian Women during Fascism, translations, introduction, and afterword by Robin PickeringIazzi (New York: Feminist Press, 1993), 23-27.

32 The Nationalization of Women Victoria De Grazia Although fascism. attempted to reestablish a traditional patriarchal society, there were at least three competing models for women in the 1920s and 1930s. In opposition to the conception of womanhood and maternity championed by the Catholic Church, a consumerist ideal of an independent woman (spending her own money on cigarettes, driving automobiles, and traveling alone) was fostered in magazines, advertisements, and the cinema. Even within fascism, there was a conflict between the ideal of woman as providing future soldiers for the new empire (ancient Roman matrons were the model here) and a more technocratic, futurist, “left-wing” fascism that saw women in a vastly different light. The generation of Italian women that came of age in the 1930s, as Irene Brin saw it, was “noisy, ingenuous, and sad.” Although “frightfully self-conscious about itself,” it was a generation “ignorant of being subject to constraints unprecedented in their absoluteness.” So exalted was it by “a sense of freedom from all moral, sentimental, and physical bonds that it didn’t realize until too late that it had lost its liberty.” Brin, an emancipated, rapier-witted journalist who moved easily between Rome, Milan, London, and Paris, was mainly referring to women whom she knew from her own social circles. By and large, they were the offspring of propertied families that had comfortably accommodated themselves to the dictatorship. Born to privilege, they lived insulated from the troubles of Italian working-class women. Nor were they familiar with the existence of rural women, whose habits of life they would only have shrugged off as dismally dull and backward.

La giornata della fede (the Day of the Wedding Ring), a fascist propaganda poster. The caption reads: “On 18 December 1935 [in the midst of the Ethiopian War] millions of Italians donated their wedding rings to contribute to the war effort: they received an iron ring in exchange engraved with the date of that Sunday.” (Courtesy of Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.) Still, Brin’s remarks are relevant to the experience of young women of all backgrounds coming of age in Italy during the long years of Mussolini’s dictatorship. Their lives were a disconcerting experience of new opportunities and new repressions: they felt the enticement of things modern; they also sensed the drag of tradition. Mussolini’s regime stood for returning women to home and hearth, restoring patriarchal authority, and confining female destiny to bearing babies. To be sure, these constraints were not as overly violent as other state actions in peacetime, including stifling political freedoms and smashing the free trade unions, not to mention the persecution of Italian Jews in the wake of the racial laws of November 1938. It was indeed the apparent normalness of the constraints on women that made them all the more mystifying, insidious, and demeaning. At the same time, the fascist dictatorship celebrated the Nuova italiana, or “New Italian Woman.” Fascism stood just as visibly for the camaraderie of volunteer organizations and for recognizing rights and duties for women in a strong national state. Not least of all, the dictatorship was identified with the physical freedom and more emancipated behaviors associated with the spaces and occasions of modern leisure pastimes. Why a regime that is usually associated with totalitarian repression and utter patriarchal reaction should have been experienced so ambivalently is the subject of this book. From the start, then, this book tells of the deep conflict within the fascist state between the demands of modernity and the desire to reimpose traditional authority. Benito Mussolini, like Hitler in Nazi Germany, vaunted his ability to promote economic change in order to build up a national strength. At the same time, he condemned and sought to forestall the social fallout that, at least since the nineteenth century, had accompanied rapid economic transformations. This conflict was especially visible in the regime’s attitudes toward women. On the one hand, fascists condemned all the social practices customarily connected with the emancipation of women—from the vote and female participation in the labor force to family planning. They also sought to extirpate the very attitudes and behaviors of individual self-interest that underlay women’s demands for equality and autonomy. On the other hand, fascism, in an effort to build up national economic strength and to mobilize all of Italian society’s resources—including the capacity of women to reproduce and nurture—inevitably promoted some of the very changes it sought to curb. Mobilizing politics, modernizing social services, finally, the belligerent militarism of the 1930s, all had the unintended effect of undercutting conservative notions of female roles and family styles. In the process, fascist institutions ordained new kinds of social involvement and recast older notions of maternity and fatherhood, femaleness and masculinity. As in other areas of society, the dictatorship claimed to be restoring the old, when, in spite of itself, it established much that was new. Because Italian fascism’s positions on women were not merely of its own invention, nor

were they, in the last analysis, that distant from the attitudes, policies, and trends prevailing in non-authoritarian states, they need to be studied in a wider time frame and in comparative context. Mussolini’s sexual politics crystalized deep-seated resentments against broader changes in the condition of women in Western societies. These, in turn, were bound up with the final crisis during the Great War of what John Maynard Keynes described in 1919 as the Victorian mode of capital accumulation. Reinforced by an ideology of scarcity, Europe’s preWorld War I liberal order had progressed by demanding of its subjects strict social discipline and puritanical sexual mores. The exercise of public power was relatively limited, political participation was restricted, and the demands on most subjects were rudimentary, namely that they labor hard, consume minimally, and refrain from making excessive demands on government resources. This order was challenged not least of all by the great emancipatory movement among European women. Already evident in the pre-war suffrage movements, the trend toward female emancipation had deeper wellsprings in the demographic revolution and the spread of liberal ideas in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It became irreversible once millions of women were mobilized in wartime economies and partook thereafter in the manifestly freer sexual and social customs of 1920s mass culture. At the same time, Western governments were confronting the complex concerns which policymakers addressed under the rubric of the “population problem” or “demographic crisis.” These ran the gamut from fertility decline and what social workers now call “problem families,” to male-female job competition and unpredictable consumer behaviors. Practically all of these issues bore on the multiplicity of sometimes incompatible roles women performed in contemporary society—as mothers, wives, citizens, workers, consumers, and clients of social welfare services. The proposed solutions inevitably presented policymakers with a conundrum, which the Swedish sociologist and social reformer Alva Myrdal summed up in an incisive phrase: “One sex [women] a social problem.” In the interwar decades, all Western governments reacted to this double challenge of democratization and demographic crisis. They responded at first by sanctioning female suffrage, and then by developing new public discourses about women, legislating about their place in the labor market, and recodifying family policies. A restructuring of gender relations thus went hand in hand with the recasting of economic and political institutions to secure conservative interests in the face of economic uncertainty and the democratization of public life. In no previous period did state action focus so intensely on institutionalizing what Michel Foucault has called “the government of life.” Never before was the sphere of gender relations more explicitly the focus of reformist zeal. However, both the scope and outcome of policies differed from country to country. In the state-interventionist capitalism which emerged everywhere in Western societies during the two decades between the World Wars, decisions were made about whether government policies would take an authoritarian or democratic cast, repress labor or coopt it, allow women greater freedom or impose more restrictions on them. By and large, the outcomes varied according to the character of the class coalitions in power and their stands on broad issues of social welfare and economic redistribution. In fascist Italy (and, later, arguably, in Nazi Germany as well), government addressed the double issue of population politics and female emancipation by exploiting longstanding

traditions of mercantilist thinking. These traditions had acquired renewed currency from the 1870s onward as European elites, reacting to heightened international competition and growing class conflicts, sought to protect domestic markets from foreign goods and build up export capacity. Like their eighteenth-century forebears, who theorized the need for a “multitude of laborious poor,” neomercantilists worried about optimizing population size to supply cheap labor, satisfy military needs, and keep up home demand. By the turn of the twentieth century, these concerns became complicated by additional worries: declining fertility rates, ethnic minorities whose racial characteristics and nationalist strivings allegedly undermined nationalstate identity, and, finally, internal fertility differentials that threatened the proliferation of the least fit while the elites dwindled away. By the eve of the Great War, a new biological politics was emerging, permeated with social Darwinist notions of life as a deadly struggle for existence. Eugenicist and social welfare programs were proposed to serve two principal ends of state policy: to buttress declining power in the international field and to secure control over home populations. Insofar as ethnic diversity and female emancipation were identified as obstacles to success, biological politics was easily fused with antifeminism and antiSemitism.... Fascist Italy cast the population issue in terms of quantity rather than quality. Citing the overriding national interest, the state declared itself the sole arbiter of population fitness. Hence, on principle, it denied women any role in decisions regarding childbearing. Indeed, on population issues, women were presumed to be antagonists of the state, acting solely on the family’s interest without regard for the nation’s needs. Seeking to compel women to have more children, the state banned abortion, the sale of contraceptive devices, and sex education. At the same time, the fascist state favored men at the expense of women in the family structure, the labor market, the political system, and society at large. It did so by exploiting the vast machinery of political and social control that had made it possible in the first place to shift the burden of economic growth to the least advantaged members of society. In sum, by foreclosing reforms and by aggravating economic insecurity and social inequalities, fascist policy may actually have increased deterrents to childbearing and heightened fertility differentials between urban and rural areas.

Victoria De Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 1-5. See also David G. Horn, Social Bodies: Science, Reproduction, and Italian Modernity (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994); Robin PickeringIazzi, Politics of the Visible: Writing Women, Culture, and Fascism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997); Barbara Spackman, Fascist Virilities: Rhetoric, Ideology and Social Fantasy in Italy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); Elizabeth Dixon Whitaker, Measuring Mamma‘s Milk: Fascism and the Medicalization of Maternity in Fascist Italy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000).

VI FASCIST RACISM, ANTI-SEMITISM, AND THE HOLOCAUST

33 Facetta Nera: Little Black Face In 1935, fascist Italy invaded the independent African country of Ethiopia. Catholic bishops blessed Italian soldiers leaving to fight other Christians as millions of women in Italy and the United States donated wedding rings to the “sacred cause. ”Even using the techniques of aerial andgas warfare, the Italian military had difficulties in defeating the Ethiopians. In May 1936, Marshal Pietro Badoglio and Italian forces entered the capital city of Adis Ababa, and Mussolini proclaimed the creation of an “African Empire” from the balcony of Palazzo Venezia in Rome. This song was sung by Italian soldiers in Abyssinia (Ethiopia). The imperial adventure represents the beginning of a racial “consciousness” in fascist Italy, for officials were concerned about sexual relations between Italian soldiers and Ethiopian women. Facetta Nera (Little Black Face) Little Moorish girl, slave amongst slaves, If you look to the sea from the plateau, You will see as if in a dream many ships And a tricolor flag waving for you. Little black face, Beautiful Abyssinian, Wait and hope For the hour is near! when we will be Together with you, we will give you Another law and another King. Our law is slavery to love, our motto is LIBERTY and DUTY, we blackshirts will vindicate the heroes who fell to free you!

Little black face, Beautiful Abyssinian, Wait and hope For the hour is near! when we will be Together with you, we will give you Another law and another King. Little black face, little Abyssinian, We will bring you to Rome, free. You will be kissed by our sun, You will be in a blackshirt too. Little black face, You will be Roman Your flag will be Only the Italian one! We will march Together with you And we will file past the DUCE And before the King! Little black face, Beautiful Abyssinian, Wait and hope For the hour is near! when we will be Together with you, we will give you Another law and another King.

“Faccetta Nera” words and melody at http://ingeb.org/songs/facettan.html; translation by Stanislao G. Pugliese. See also Thomas M. Coffey, Lion by the Tail: The Italian-Ethiopian War (London: Hamilton, 1974), and A. J. Barker, The Rape of Ethiopia (New York: Ballantine, 1971).

34 Racial Manifesto When the fascist movement was born in Milan on 23 March 1919, there was no sign of antiSemitism. In fact, Italian Jews participated in the movement, as middle-class Italians, not as Jews. Aldo Finzi was named undersecretary of the interior, and Guido Jung was finance minister There had, of course, always been anti-Semitism in Italy, often cultivated by the Catholic Church. Theologically, Jews were seen as having betrayed Christ; in secular terms, Jews were often associated with materialism, rationalism, liberalism, and socialism —in short, modernism in all its forms. With the Ethiopian War, the regime became raceconscious and issued decrees forbidding sexual relations between Italian soldiers and Ethiopian women. An anti-Semitic press campaign was begun by the regime as early as 1934. The increasingly close alliance with Hitler’s Germany allowed fascist anti-Semites, until then held in check by Mussolini, greater voice. The Manifesto degli scienziati razzisti was published for the first time in the Giornale d’Italia on 14 July 1938 and signed by 180 scientists. It was published by the regime’s strongest antiSemite and racist, Telesio Interlandi, in his review La difesa della razza on 5 August 1938. According to the diaries of Giuseppe Bottai and Galeazzo Ciano, it was almost completely written by Mussolini himself.

THE MANIFESTO OF RACIAL SCIENTISTS 1. Human races exist. The existence of human races is not an abstraction of our spirit but corresponds to phenomenal, material reality and is perceivable by our senses. This reality is represented by impressive masses of millions of men who share similar physical and psychological characteristics which were inherited and continue to be inherited. To say that there are human races is not to say a priori that there are superior or inferior races, but only that there are different races of men. 2. There are “great” races and “minor” races. It is not enough to acknowledge that there are major systematic groups, commonly called races and identified by certain characteristics, but it is necessary to admit that minor systematic groups also exist distinguished by a greater number of shared characteristics. From a biological point of view, theses groups constitute true human races, and their existence is a self-evident truth. 3. Race is a purely biological concept. It is therefore based on concepts other than those of a “people” or a “nation,” essentially based on historical, linguistic, and religious considerations. But at the base of differences between peoples and nationalities are differences of race. If the

Italians are different from the French, the Germans, the Turks, the Greeks, etc., it is not only because each group has a different language and a different history, but because the racial constitution of each of these peoples is different. Since very ancient times, the proportions of different races that have gone into forming various peoples have themselves varied, so much so that sometimes one component race has exerted absolute dominion over the others while at other times they have all become harmoniously fused; while at other times still, the different component races have persisted in an unassimilated state. 4. The majority of the population of Italy today is of Aryan origin, and its civilization is Aryan. This population and its Aryan civilization have inhabited our peninsula for many millennia; very little remains of pre-Aryan peoples. The origins of modern Italians is based essentially on components of those same races that constituted and that still constitute the perennial living fabric of Europe. 5. That great masses of men influenced historical periods is a myth. After the invasion of the Lombards, there were no other notable migrations of people in Italy capable of influencing the racial physiognomy of the nation. Thus, while the racial composition of other European nations has varied considerably even in modern times, for Italy the racial composition today is mostly the same as it was a thousand years ago: most of the 44 million Italians of today date back to families that have lived in Italy for at least a millennium. 6. There now exists a pure “Italian race.” This statement is not based on the confusion of the biological concept of race with the historico-linguistic concept of a people or a nation but on the purest of blood ties that unite present-day Italians with the generations that for millennia have inhabited Italy. This ancient purity of blood is the greatest claim for the nobility of the Italian nation. 7. The time has come for Italians to openly declare themselves racists. All the work accomplished by the regime to this day has been founded upon racism. In the speeches of the Capo [Mussolini], appeals to the concept of race have been frequent. The concept of race in Italy must be approached from a purely biological point of view, without philosophical or religious preconceptions. This does not mean that German theories of racism should be introduced into Italy without modification or that Italians and Scandinavians are the same thing. It merely singles out for Italians a distinctively European physical and, above all, psychological model that stands entirely apart from all non-European races; this means elevating the Italian to an ideal of higher self-awareness and greater responsibility. 8. It is necessary to make a clear distinction between Mediterranean Europeans on the one hand and the Oriental and African Mediterraneans, on the other. Therefore theories which assert that some Europeans are of African origin and count the Semitic and Hamitic populations as part of a common Mediterranean race, claiming ideological relations and sympathies that are absolutely unacceptable, must be viewed as dangerous. 9. Jews do not belong to the Italian race. Nothing remains of the Semites who have landed on the fatherland’s sacred soil over the course of centuries. Even the Arab occupation of Sicily left nothing apart from the memory of a few names; in any case, the process of assimilation has

always been very rapid in Italy. The Jews represent the only population that was never assimilated in Italy because it was comprised of non-European racial elements absolutely different from the elements that gave rise to Italians. 10. The purely European physical and psychological characteristics of Italians must not be altered in any way. Unions are allowable only among European races; in which case one cannot speak of a true hybridism because the races in question belong to a common stock, differing only in a few characteristics while remaining the same in many others. The purely European character of Italians is altered by their crossbreeding with any non-European race that brings with it a civilization different from the millennial civilization of the Aryans. “Manifesto degli scienziati razzisti,” at www.menorah.it/Articoli/storia/razzl.htm; trans. Stanislao G. Pugliese.

35 The Word “Jew” Rosetta Loy Born in Rome in 1931, Rosetta Loy is one of Italy’s leading novelists and journalists, having won every major Italian literary prize. Best known to English readers for her novel The Dust Roads of Monferrato, she has published seven novels and a collection of short stories, and she has translated numerous works. Loy was a seven year-old girl from a Catholic family when the Racial Laws were passed in 1938. Here she describes the fear born of ignorance when Catholics thought about the Jews. If I go back in time and think of when I first heard the word Jew, I see myself sitting on a little blue chair in the nursery, a room with flowery peach-colored wallpaper showing the marks of children’s scribbles. It is late spring and the high window facing the stone terrace is wide open. I can look into the apartment on the other side of the street and see the curtains there swinging in the breeze. Inside there’s a party going on; I can watch the people coming and going. Just a few days ago, the family had a new baby and the party is for him. I turn to the woman sitting beside me, also on a small chair, her body wrapped up like a ball. “Is it a baptism?” I ask her. “Certainly not,” she says. She is Annemarie, my German nanny, my fräulein. “They are Jews,” she adds, gesturing toward the window with her chin. “They don’t baptize their babies, they circumcise them,” she explains, using the German, beschneiden, with a grimace of disgust. I haven’t learned the word, but I know part of it, schneiden, to cut. “What?” I say, not believing her. “Yes, they cut off a piece of the flesh,” she tells me matter of factly. “With scissors?” I picture the blood, a sea of red washing over the bassinet. Annemarie’s

explanation is vague but chilling. She indicates some part of the body as she peers out the window with a severe look on her face, but I don’t understand her gesture. “Yes,” she says, “really, with scissors.” Inside the apartment across the street I can see little girls with bows in their hair just like mine, and ladies wearing pearl necklaces, draped in soft knit dresses like the ones my mother wears. “They are Jews,” Annemarie says again, and her beautiful sky-blue eyes turn harsh as her gaze rests on a maid walking through the room with a tray in her hands. Perhaps there among the teacups is the piece that was cut off the new baby, a lump of skin or even a whole finger. Our neighbor, Signora Della Seta, is also Jewish. She lives next door and is old, or at least she seems old to me. One day when I’m sick she comes to visit. I have a fever and am lying in my mother’s room in the huge double bed, where my body is all but swallowed up. Signora Della Seta’s gray hair is rolled up in a net. She has a present for me, a little basket lined with blue satin; inside is a baby doll held in place by elastic strips sewn into the satin. Another strip holds a tiny baby’s bottle with a red tip. I think it’s a beautiful present; there’s also a doll-sized pair of underpants and a sweater. I love Signora Della Seta, even though she’s Jewish. Our upstairs neighbors are the Levis. They are noisy. Sometimes I can hear them playing the piano. Their mother has very dark bright eyes. The Levis are not kind like Signora Della Seta and we see them only on the stairs or in the elevator. They don’t bring me presents. Annemarie says they are Jewish as well. Every so often Giorgio Levi rings our doorbell and asks my brother to play soccer with him in the Villa Borghese. Giorgio is a year older than my brother. He has dark wavy hair and the cheerful face of a boy who lives to race down the stairs to play outside with his friends. After the game, my brother comes back and washes his feet in the bidet. He complains that Giorgio is bossy and if he doesn’t pass him the ball fast enough, Giorgio elbows him in the side. At kindergarten, Mother Gregoria shows us the color illustrations in the Bible. She has round red cheeks. She’s small and she, too, sits in a little chair, the folds of her long white wool dress spread out on the floor. Embroidered over her breast is a pierced red heart worn in memory of the Passion of Christ. In her chubby little hands she holds up a picture of Abraham raising his sword over Isaac, his son. Luckily an angel comes in time to stop him from killing Isaac. Abraham and Isaac are Jews also; they chose to die in the flames rather than deny God. In those days God had no heart, then luckily Christ came down to earth. Unlike God, Christ is beautiful and good. He has long chestnut hair and blue eyes. Every morning when I go to kindergarten he is there waiting for me. His pink plaster hand points to the heart exposed on his chest, which has little drops of blood dripping from it. The heart is where love is. Christ loves us. We are Christians—I was baptized in Saint Peter’s and my godmother is Signora Basile. She’s old like Signora Della Seta but she’s a lot skinnier; her long neck and small head make her look like an ostrich. One time when she came to visit, my brother opened the door to the living room, where she was sitting, and said, “Signora Basile has a mustache,” then ran away.

It’s true—the bristly gray hairs above her lip scratch my cheek when she leans down to kiss me. But she has very gentle round eyes, and she didn’t even get angry when my brother was rude to her. He was trying to be tough. For my baptism she gave me a gold chain with the Madonna of Pompeii on a medallion that I suck on when I’m in bed in the dark. Every year at Christmas Signora Basile organizes a charity raffle for the poor people of the parish. Pilate was Roman and the Pharisees and the scribes were Jews. Herod was a Jew and so was Cain. And Barabbas. They were all Jews, except the centurions. On the days when I don’t go to kindergarten, Annemarie takes me to the Villa Giulia to a little park tucked away beside the National Gallery of Modern Art. I’m always wrapped up in a hat and scarf because I’m not as strong as my sister Teresa. There’s hardly ever anyone else in the park, but then I’m not supposed to play with other children in case I catch something from them. Sometimes there’s another little girl on her own, crouched near the benches, stirring the gravel around with a colored shovel. I can see her underpants, the large white kind we call petit bateau, just like the ones Annemarie slips on me every morning. I squat on the gravel as well and look at her. She is blond and her wavy hair falls down around her very fair skin. I’d like to have her shovel. Around her neck she wears a gold star. Annemarie calls to me. She’s talking to the other girl’s nanny. They say that the girl is very rich. Maybe I can play with her. I turn back to look at her as she stirs the gravel and am fascinated by her star as it dangles in the sun, reflecting sparks of light. I ask her whether I can touch it. “No, you can’t,” she says. She doesn’t want me to come too close. As we walk home, I ask Annemarie about the star. “It’s the Star of David,” she tells me. Mother Gregoria has shown us a picture of David slinging stones at Goliath. Annemarie explains that the girl wears a six-pointed star instead of a Blessed Mother medallion or one of baby Jesus. I don’t know how, but I understand that the girl is Jewish without Annemarie’s telling me. “Did they cut her, too?” I say. “What do you mean? Cut what?” Annemarie is speaking German. I have to speak German as well, otherwise she won’t answer me. Now the star seems full of mystery. I’m jealous of the girl who can wear that instead of my plain old medallion. I have a book about the adventures of a little Catholic boy kidnapped by unbelievers who want him to renounce Jesus. In the book there are some Freemasons who are very wicked. The boy is taken to a ship where there is a Jew, and he’s very wicked, too. They all want to take away the boy’s faith but he prays to the Blessed Mother and resists. At a certain point he is almost blinded. I don’t like that book, it’s cruel and stupid. I like the book about the sandman who sprinkles silver dust on the eyelids of sleeping children and carries them off to the Land of Dreams. I also like the book where you see the Befana at night, struggling to make her way through the snow and sliding down the chimney into the houses. I believe in the Befana, even though it never snows in Rome and we don’t have a chimney. Rosetta Loy, First Words: A Childhood in Fascist Italy, trans. Gregory Conti (New York: Metropolitan, 2000), 3-9.

36 Hunting Down the Jews Renzo De Felice In the early 1960s, the Italiano historian Renzo De Felice published the first major work on the history of the jews under the fascist regime. Detailed and complex, De Felice’s book generated a new interest in the fate of Italian Jewry. De Felice’s historiography—insisting on a scrupulous attention to archival documents to create an “objective” reconstruction of the past—inspired a generation of Italian scholars. Revised four times—most recently before De Felice’s death in 1996—the book has been continuously in print in Italy and recently translated into English. After the initial moments of chaos and confusion caused by the armistice of September 8, 1943 and once the front had stabilized to the south of Rome, the Germans began immediately, between September and October, to hunt down the Jews. Undertaken with typical German thoroughness and in many locations with the help of the lists of Jews that had been established after 1938 by the police precincts and periodically brought up to date by requests from Demography and Race, this hunt at once took on characteristics of extreme cruelty and sealed the fate of thousands of Jews. In many towns the Germans did the hunting themselves, in others they used Fascist units, in still others they simply “took custody” of Jews who had been interned by the Fascists and who in many cases had presented themselves on their own in response to the orders posted by the Germans, the posting being among the most typical and dramatic occurrences of those first months following September 8, 1943. Many Jews continued to believe, even after the armistice, that the kind of excesses done to them in other countries would never take place in Italy. “Such things just don’t happen in Italy” was the statement that went around in those days. The manner in which the persecution had taken place until then, the presence of the Vatican, and the new laws and those reconfirmed by the RSI with their many

exceptions and their apparent humanity, gave hundreds and hundreds of Jews an initial moment of illusion. The testimony of an Italian witness at the Eichmann trial is typical. Answering the question if in September 1943 she had any idea as to the fate of the Jews under the Germans and what her reactions were to the news of deportations being broadcast by Radio London, she said: We still hoped that this was mostly propaganda, and at the same time we thought that the position of the Jews in Italy was unique and that certain things could not happen here. Actually we had already seen how, during the Fascist regime, in spite of anti Jewish legislation, we could find a way of living and hoped that this would continue afterwards. Not only that: some of us thought that due to the various discriminations we had benefitted from under Fascism, we would continue to benefit from the same discriminations under the German regime. Until they actually saw proof of what the Germans intended to do, many hundreds of Jews remained confidently at home, disbelieving even the advance signals of the tragedy to come. Having seen that the Germans, and in some cases the Fascists, at Ancona for example, were demanding ransoms in exchange for immunity—the case of Rome was only the most glaring among many—a lot of Jews believed that all one had to do was pay to save one’s life. Today, years later and knowing how events were to unfold, it is inconceivable that so many Jews were seized by the Germans when they had many opportunities to save themselves or at least attempt to do so. A few extreme, but no less significant, cases will illustrate how confident so many were at the beginning. At Ferrara the Fascists concentrated the “pure” Jews in one wing of the prison, those falling into the category to be interned by the RSI. During a bombing raid the building was damaged and the Jews left, but once the raid was over they all returned to the prison and reported back to the Fascists, so that a modus vivendi was established: when the Allies were bombing the Jews could seek refuge where they wished, and afterwards they would come back. Very few took advantage of this situation to escape; most of them were careful to respect the “agreement” and were later interned at Fossoli. As long as Fossoli was managed by the Fascists it did not have such a bad reputation; at Ferrara, when it was known that the Jews were being transferred there, some “mixed race” persons who had been excluded from internment by the laws of the RSI did everything they could to be taken to Fossoli, where things were better and there was no risk of bombing. Panic and terror struck everyone only after the first large-scale raids and the first massacres. But it was much too late. In Rome alone those taken in raids were over two thousand (2,091). Venice, Genoa, Fiume, and Florence each gave over two hundred victims to the Nazi concentration camps. The total number of those deported from Italy between 1943 and 1945 was 7,495. Of these only 610 were able to return from the hell of the Lager; 6,885 died in captivity. To these 6,885 victims of Nazi savagery must be added the 75 Jews murdered in cold blood at the Ardeatine Caves in Rome on March 24, 1944, who represented every social class and

condition, sex and age, young boys and old men, and many other victims of the executions undertaken by the Nazis and the Fascists during those years. Many others were murdered during raids not because they tried to escape but out of sheer cruelty. The most horrible instances were those of September-October 1943 on Lake Maggiore and Val d’Aosta. Many Jews had sought shelter there simply as refugees, as well as to escape from the Nazis and the Fascists. Having been informed, the Germans organized a series of raids. Many Jews were captured. Nazi butchery reached its peak in the areas of Arona, Meina and Intra: the Jews captured were not even deported, but with hands and feet tied were drowned in the lake. In the following days about twenty bodies were recovered that could not all be identified because many of the Jews in hiding were Greeks with no family in Italy, and those who could escape the massacre scattered out into the area—among these victims were the writer Sabatino Lopez and Commander Federico Jarach. A similar and possibly even more horrible case took place at Gressoney. The family of Ettore Ovazza was in hiding consisting of the former editor of La nostra bandiera, his wife, and his fifteen-year-old daughter—another son had been killed and robbed by a guide who was supposed to get the boy into Switzerland and seems to have tipped off the Germans about the hiding place of the whole family. On October 9, 1943 the Germans surprised the Ovazza family, arresting them and locking them up in the local schoolhouse where they were murdered two days later, their still-live bodies incinerated in the boiler of the heating system. These were, we repeat, only some of the most sensational among many such cases. We could also mention the massacre of the “Pardo house” on August 1, 1944 at Pisa, in which the Germans murdered seven other Jews. The largest such raid, at least in number of victims, was the well-known action in Rome described by Giacomo De Benedetti in a short book appropriately entitled Oclober 16, 1943. Besides being the largest, it is for our study quite typical and illustrates Nazi methods applied to a single situation that was to be repeated in many smaller towns: first, trick the Jews into believing that by paying they could save their own lives, then deport them while at the same time grabbing all their valuables. From September 8-25, 1943 the Jews of Rome were not harmed. As Ugo Foà wrote: “They were beginning to secretly hope that the excesses the Germans had engaged in against their brothers in faith in other countries previously invaded would not be repeated in Rome.” Suddenly, on September 26, Union President Almansi and the president of the Community Foà were summoned to the German embassy by the police commander, the infamous SS Major Herbert Kappler, “for communications.” Kappler received the two personally; at first he was friendly, then he became tougher and said: You and your co-religionists are Italian nationals, but that is of no consequence to me. We Germans consider you only as Jews and therefore as our enemy. Rather, to be more precise, we consider you a distinct group, but not completely apart from the worst enemies against whom we are fighting. And this is how we shall treat you. But we shall not take your lives nor your children if you agree to our requests. It is your gold that we want, to buy more weapons for our country.

Within 36 hours you must pay 50 kilograms to me. If you deliver it no harm shall come to you. If you don’t, 200 among you will be taken and deported to Germany to the Russian border or otherwise be rendered harmless. Any attempt at discussion by Almansi and Foà was useless. They asked whether the threatened measures applied only to the Jews who were listed as members of the Community or also those dissociated, baptized, those of “mixed race”; Kappler answered unhesitatingly: “I make no differences between one Jew and another. Whether they are on the Community lists or dissociated, baptized, or mixed, all those with a drop of Jewish blood are the same to me. They are all enemies.” The only concession he agreed to was about the payment: besides gold he would be ready to accept sterling and dollars, but not Italian lire: “I don’t know what to do with your currency, I can print as much of it as I want.” After the meeting with Kappler, the two presidents attempted to convince the Italian police authorities to step in and mediate, but neither the general clirector of Public Security, police headquarters, nor Demography and Race wanted to handle the matter. The collection of the gold began immediately. They tried to inform as many Jews as possible, and the news was spread by word of mouth throughout the city. At first, fearing they could not assemble the entire amount of gold demanded, it was decided to buy part of it—this was the only form of cooperation given by Italian authorities, who authorized the purchase of gold even though it was forbidden—and one of the organizers of the gathering of the gold, Renzo Levi, asked the vice abbot of the Sacred Heart, Father Borsarelli, to find out, if time made it impossible to deliver the full amount, whether the Holy See would be amenable to lending the difference. The Holy See answered that it would be ready to give the balance of gold required and that the Community should not worry about repayment, which could take place at a later date when it was able do so. In the end there would be no need for the help of the Holy See. Hundreds of Jews and even non Jews, among them some priests, answered the call of the Community without hesitation. At the end of the time limit set by the Nazis, almost eighty kilograms of gold—the difference was hidden and used after the war to help create the State of Israel—had been collected, mostly consisting of rings, necklaces and other small gold objects that were everything the poor families of the Roman ghetto owned, but there were also some very large donations. The gold was then taken to Via Tasso on September 28. The Italian police provided an escort for the transportation upon request from the Union, and Police Commissioner Cappa of Demography and Race was also present at the delivery, in civilian clothes, among the workmen who were carrying boxes full of gold. When the time came to weigh the gold, five kilos at a time, a Captain Schutz, on the German side, attempted to cheat on the weight, saying that the gold totaled 45 kilograms and 300 grams rather than 50 kilograms and 300 grams; only because of complaints from Almansi and Foà did they finally acknowledge that the amount was correct, but they refused to issue any kind of receipt for the delivery. Once in possession of the gold the Germans began enacting the second part of their criminal plans. On the morning of September 29, the day after the gold was delivered, they blocked the

entrance to the Community and a group of officers who were experts in the Hebrew language began a detailed search of the premises. They removed 2,021,540 lire from the safe, as well as all the documents it contained. During the following days and until October 13, the Germans came back to the synagogue and to the Community several times, attempting to gather information regarding the wealthiest Jews and looking over the extremely valuable library collection. Fearing with good reason that the Germans wanted to take the books, a collection of immense historical and commercial value, the president of the Union, Almansi, warned the General Director of Libraries and the Ministry of the Interior, the Director of Religious Affairs, the Director General of Public Security, and the Director of Civilian Administration on October 11 that this danger existed but no one came forward to save the treasure. And so on October 13 the Germans—having returned in strength—were able to take, completely undisturbed, all the books belonging to the Community and the Rabbinical College. After plundering these valuables the Germans began the last phase of their plan, which was not to be carried out by Kappler and the army, who it appears were against it, but by three special police units sent to Rome for this purpose under the direct command of Captain Theodor Dannecker, one of Eichmann’s most brutal lieutenants. At dawn on October 16, German police surrounded the ghetto and systematically grabbed all the Jews living there, sparing no one. “Neither sex, nor age, nor poor health, nor honorary titles of any kind were of any protection against such barbaric actions: old people, children, the seriously ill, people who were near death, pregnant women or women who had just given birth, all were taken away indiscriminately.” With guns drawn and on the basis of detailed lists of names, the Germans searched all the houses within the ghetto, while others broke into many residential buildings outside the ghetto area all around the city. “All morning the wave of terror covered all of Rome with the anguish that followed the black and sinister vehicles of plunder.” This is how the plunder was described in the official report signed by Kappler from Rome via radio to SS General Karl Wolff: Today we started and concluded the anti-Jewish action, following the plan prepared in this office allowing us to take advantage of the situation. We have used all the units of the security and special police at our disposal. Due to our complete lack of confidence in the Italian police for such an action, it was not possible to have it participate. We could therefore only undertake individual arrests through 26 neighborhood actions in immediate succession. It was not possible to completely isolate some streets, both due to the requirement to maintain the status of Open City, and, most of all, due to the insufficient number of German policemen, totaling 365. In spite of this, during the action that lasted from 05:30 to 14:00 arrests were made in Jewish residences of 1,259 individuals who were taken to the assembly point at the Military School. After having freed the persons of mixed race and foreigners, including one citizen of the Vatican, the families of mixed marriages, including the Jewish spouse, Aryan domestic servants and those who were subletting, we were left with 1,007 Jews. The transport is schedule for Monday, October 18 at 9.

They will be accompanied by 30 men of the special police. The Italian population clearly displayed an attitude of passive resistance, which in many individual cases turned into active help. For example, in one case the policemen were stopped at the door of one residence by a Fascist in his black shirt, with an official document, who had most certainly substituted himself for the Jewish occupants claiming he had requisitioned the house one hour before the arrival of the German forces. We could also clearly see attempts to hide the Jews in nearby residences as the German forces suddenly appeared, and it is understandable that in many cases these attempts were successful. No appearance was made by the antiSemitic part of the population during the action: only a passive mass that in some cases even tried to separate the forces from the Jews. In no instance was it necessary to use firearms. The raid continued for several days, but many Jews who had been informed were able to save themselves in time. Some took their own lives to avoid arrest, and some of those who were sick died from fear. Within a few days over eight thousand Jews under arrest were sent north and from there to the extermination camps, especially at Birkenau. At war’s end, out of this mass of unfortunate people only fifteen were to return, fourteen men and one woman. Once the raid on people was completed, the raid on their possessions continued; homes were ransacked, stores and warehouses—over forty in November-December—were forced open and emptied. What took place in Rome was only one case among many, though probably the most dramatic of all given the number of victims. Ransoms like the one imposed on the Roman Jews on September 26 were imposed in many other Communities, and the same can be said for the raid on the Venice ghetto, which took place in two stages on December 31, 1943 and August 17, 1944, even though it was to have fewer consequences because the Jews were now on the alert and many were in hiding and because of the heroic sacrifice of an official of the Community, Professor Giuseppe Jona. When asked by the Germans to produce the lists of his coreligionists he told them to come back the next day, and during the night he was able to destroy the records and warn the others of the impending danger, after which he committed suicide. The other cruel raid was that of January 20, 1944 at Trieste, attacking the old and sick residents of the Gentilomo nursing home. Here as well Nazi efforts did not fully succeed because of one man’s sacrifice: Community secretary, Carlo Morpurgo, who perished tragically at Auschwitz. Renzo De Felice, The Jews In Fascist Italy, trans. Robert L. Miller (New York: Enigma, 2001), 448-55. Reprinted by permission of Enigma Books. See also Meir Michaelis, Mussolini and the Jews: German Italian Relations and the Jewish Question in Italy, 1922-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1978).

37 Consid er If This Is a Man Primo Levi Primo Levi (1919-1987) is the best-known Italian Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. Born and educated in Turin, he completed a degree in chemistry despite the anti-Semitic legislation of the late 1930s. During the Resistance, he was a member of the Action Party and joined a partisan band. Arrested, he confessed to being an “Italian of the Jewish race” rather than admit his role as a partisan (which would have led to immediate execution). Deported to Auschwitz, Levi was one of the few to survive. On his return to Italy, he became a manager of a varnish factory and wrote in his spare time. Se questo è un uomo (If This Is a Man; better known as Survival in Auschwitz) was originally rejected for publication by Natalia Ginzburg of the Einaudi publishing house and was only slowly recognized for the masterpiece it is. Levi eventually was acknowledged as one of Italy’s greatest twentiethcentury writers. He fell to his death—an apparent suicide—in 1987. In this excerpt, he tries to teach a fellow inmate a passage from Dante’s Commedia in a desperate attempt to retain their humanity. For Dante, Ulysses represents the potential and limits of human reason. Note the cacophony of languages; some have compared the concentrations camps to a modern Tower of Babel. The opening poem, Shema, is the epigraph for the book. Shema You who live safe In your warm houses, You who find, returning in the evening,

Hot food and friendly faces: Consider if this is a man Who works in the mud Who does not know peace Who fights for a scrap of bread Who dies because of a yes or a no. Consider if this is a woman, Without hair and without name With no more strength to remember, Her eyes empty and her womb cold Like a frog in winter. Meditate that this came about: I commend these words to you. Carve them in your hearts At home, in the street, Going to bed, rising; Repeat them to your children, Or may your house fall apart, May illness impede you, May your children turn their faces from you.

THE CANTO OF ULYSSES There were six of us, scraping and cleaning the inside of an underground petrol tank; the daylight only reached us through a small manhole. It was a luxury job because no one supervised us; but it was cold and damp. The powder of the rust burnt under our eyelids and coated our throats and mouths with a taste almost like blood. The rope-ladder hanging from the manhole began to sway: someone was coming. Deutsch extinguished his cigarette, Goldner woke Sivadjan; we all began to vigorously scrape the resonant steelplate wall. It was not the Vorarbeiter, it was only Jean, the Pikolo of our Kommando. Jean was an Alsatian student; although he was already twenty-four, he was the youngest Häftling of the Chemical Kommando. So that he was given the post of Pikolo, which meant the messengerclerk, responsible for the cleaning of the hut, for the distribution of tools, for the washing of bowls and for keeping record of the working hours of the Kommando. Jean spoke French and German fluently: as soon as we recognized his shoes on the top step of the ladder we all stopped scraping. “Also, Pikolo, was gibt es Neues?”

“Qu‘est ce qu’il-y-a comme soupe aujourd’hui?” ... in what mood was the Kapo? and the affair of the twenty-five lashes given to Stern? What was the weather like outside? Had he read the newspaper? What smell was coming from the civilian kitchen? What was the time? Jean was liked a great deal by the Kommando. One must realize that the post of Pikolo represented a quite high rank in the hierarchy of the Promi-nents: the Pikolo (who is usually no more than seventeen years old) does no manual work, has an absolute right to the remainder of the daily ration to be found on the bottom of the vat and can stay all day near the stove. He ‘therefore’ has the right to a supplementary half-ration and has a good chance of becoming the friend and confidant of the Kapo, from whom he officially receives discarded clothes and shoes. Now Jean was an exceptional Pikolo. He was shrewd and physically robust, and at the same time gentle and friendly: although he continued his secret individual struggle against death, he did not neglect his human relationships with less privileged comrades; at the same time he had been so able and persevering that he had managed to establish himself in the confidence of Alex, the Kapo. Alex had kept all his promises. He had shown himself a violent and unreliable rogue, with an armour of solid and compact ignorance and stupidity, always excepting his intuition and consummate technique as convict-keeper. He never let slip an opportunity of proclaiming his pride in his pure blood and his green triangle, and displayed a lofty contempt for his ragged and starving chemists: “Ihr Doktoren! Ihr Intelligenten!” he sneered every day, watching them crowd around with their bowls held out for the distribution of the ration. He was extremely compliant and servile before the civilian Meister and with the SS he kept up ties of cordial friendship. He was clearly intimidated by the register of the Kommando and by the daily report of work, and this had been the path that Pikolo had chosen to make himself indispensable. It had been a long, cautious and subtle task which the entire Kommando had followed for a month with bated breath; but at the end the porcupine’s defence was penetrated, and Pikolo confirmed in his office to the satisfaction of all concerned. Although Jean had never abused his position, we had already been able to verify that a single word of his, said in the right tone of voice and at the right moment, had great power; many times already it had saved one of us from a whipping or from being denounced to the SS. We had been friends for a week: we discovered each other during the unusual occasion of an air-raid alarm, but then, swept by the fierce rhythm of the Lager, we had only been able to greet each other fleetingly, at the latrines, in the washroom. Hanging with one hand on the swaying ladder, he pointed to me: “Aujourd’ hui c’est Primo qui viendra avec moi chercher la soupe.” Until yesterday it had been Stern, the squinting Transylvanian; now he had fallen into disgrace for some story of brooms stolen from the store, and Pikolo had managed to support my candidature as assistant to the “Essenholen,” the daily corvée of the ration. He climbed out and I followed him, blinking in the brightness of the day. It was warmish

outside, the sun drew a faint smell of paint and tar from the greasy earth, which made me think of a holiday beach of my infancy. Pikolo gave me one of the two wooden poles, and we walked along under a clear June sky. I began to thank him, but he stopped me: it was not necessary. One could see the Carpathians covered in snow. I breathed in the fresh air, I felt unusually light-hearted. “Tu es fou de marcher si vite. On a le temps, tu sais.” The ration was collected half a mile away; one had to return with the pot weighing over a hundred pounds supported on the two poles. It was quite a tiring task, but it meant a pleasant walk there without a load, and the everwelcome chance of going near the kitchens. We slowed down. Pikolo was expert. he had chosen the path cleverly so that we would have to make a long detour, walking at least for an hour, without arousing suspicion. We spoke of our houses, of Strasbourg and Turin, of the books we had read, of what we had studied, of our mothers: how all mothers resemble each other! His mother too had scolded him for never knowing how much money he had in his pocket; his mother too would have been amazed if she had known that he had found his feet, that day by day he was finding his feet. An SS man passed on a bicycle. It is Rudi, the Blockführer. Halt! Attention! Take off your beret! “Sale brute, celui-là. Ein ganzgemeiner Hund.” Can he speak French and German with equal facility? Yes, he thinks indifferently in both languages. He spent a month in Liguria, he likes Italy, he would like to learn Italian. I would be pleased to teach him Italian: why not try? We can do it. Why not immediately, one thing is as good as another, the important thing is not to lose time, not to waste this hour. Limentani from Rome walks by, dragging his feet, with a bowl hidden under his jacket. Pikolo listens carefully, picks up a few words of our conversation and repeats them smiling: “Zup-pa, cam-po, acqua.” Frenkl the spy passes. Quicken our pace, one never knows, he does evil for evil’s sake. ... The canto of Ulysses. Who knows how or why it comes into my mind. But we have no time to change, this hour is already less than an hour. If Jean is intelligent he will understand. He will understand—today I feel capable of so much. ... Who is Dante? What is the Comedy? That curious sensation of novelty which one feels if one tries to explain briefly what is the Divine Comedy. How the Inferno is divided up, what are its punishments. Virgil is Reason, Beatrice is Theology. Jean pays great attention, and I begin slowly and accurately: Then of that age-old fire the loftier horn Began to mutter and move, as a wavering flame Wrestle against the wind and is over-worn; And, like a speaking tongue vibrant to frame

Language, the tip of it flickering to and fro Threw out a voice and answered: When I came ... Here I stop and try to translate. Disastrous—poor Dante and poor French! All the same, the experience seems to promise well: Jean admires the bizarre simile of the tongue and suggests the appropriate word to translate “age-old.” And after “When I came?” Nothing. A hole in my memory. “Before Aeneas ever named it so.” Another hole. A fragment floats into my mind, not relevant : “... nor piety To my old father, not the wedded love That should have comforted Penelope... ,” is it correct? “... So on the open sea I set forth.” Of this I am certain, I am sure, I can explain it to Pikolo, I can point out why “I set forth” is not “je me mis,” it is much stronger and more audacious, it is a chain which has been broken, it is throwing oneself on the other side of a barrier, we know the impulse well. The open sea: Pikolo has traveled by sea, and knows what it means: it is when the horizon closes in on itself, free, straight ahead and simple, and there is nothing but the smell of the sea; sweet things, ferociously far away. We have arrived at Kraftwerk, where the cable-laying Kommando works. Engineer Levi must be here. Here he is, one can only see his head above the trench. He waves to me, he is a brave man, I have never seen his morale low, he never speaks of eating. “Open sea,” “open sea,” I know it rhymes with “left me” “ ... and that small band of comrades that had never left me,” but I cannot remember if it comes before or after. And the journey as well, the foolhardy journey beyond the Pillars of Hercules, how sad, I have to tell it in prose—a sacrilege. I have only rescued two lines, but they are worth stopping for: ... that none should prove so hardy To venture the uncharted distances ... “to venture”: I had to come to the Lager to realize that it is the same expression as before: “I set forth.” But I say nothing to Jean, I am not sure that it is an important observation. How many things there are to say, and the sun is already high, midday is near. I am in a hurry, a terrible hurry. Here, listen Pikolo, open your ears and your mind, you have to understand, for my sake: Think of your breed; for brutish ignorance Your mettle was not made; you were made men, To follow after knowledge and excellence.

As if I also was hearing it for the first time: like the blast of a trumpet, like the voice of God. For a moment I forget who I am and where I am. Pikolo begs me to repeat it. How good Pikolo is, he is aware that it is doing me good. Or perhaps it is something more: perhaps, despite the wan translation and the pedestrian, rushed commentary, he has received the message, he has felt that it has to do with him, that it has to do with all men who toil, and with us in particular; and that it has to do with us two, who dare to reason of these things with the poles for the soup on our shoulders. “My little speech made every one so keen ...” ... and I try, but in vain, to explain how many things this “keen” means. There is another lacuna here, this time irreparable. “ ... the light kindles and grows Beneath the moon” or something like it; but before it? ... Not an idea, “keine Ahnung” as they say here. Forgive me, Pikolo, I have forgotten at least four triplets. “Ça ne fait rien, vas y tout de même.” ...When at last hove up a mountain, grey With distance, and so lofty and so steep, I never had seen the like on any day. Yes, yes, “so lofty and so steep,” not “very steep,” a consecutive proposition. And the mountains when one sees them in the distance ... the mountains ... oh, Pikolo, Pikolo, say something, speak, do no let me think of my mountains which used to show up against the dusk of evening as I returned by train from Milan to Turin! Enough, one must go on, these are things that one thinks but does not say. Pikolo waits and looks at me. I would give today’s soup to know how to connect “the like on any day” to the last lines. I try to reconstruct it through the rhymes, I close my eyes, I bite my fingers—but it is no use, the rest is silence. Other verses dance in my head: “ ... The sodden ground belched wind ... ,” no, it is something else. It is late, it is late, we have reached the kitchen, I must finish: And three times round she went in roaring smother With all the waters; at the fourth the poop Rose, and the prow went down, as pleased Another. I keep Pikolo back, it is vitally necessary and urgent that he listen, that he understand this “as pleased Another” before it is too late; tomorrow he or I might be dead, or we might never see each another again, I must tell him. I must explain to him about the Middle Ages, about the so human and so necessary and yet unexpected anachronism, but still more, something gigantic that

I myself have only just seen, in a flash of intuition, perhaps the reason for our fate, for our being here today.... We are now in the soup queue, among the sordid, ragged crowd of soup-carriers from other Kommandos. Those just arrived press against our backs. “Kraut und Rüben? Kraut und Rüben.” The official announcement is made that the soup today is of cabbages and turnips: “Choux et navets. Kuposzta és répak.” And over our heads the hollow seas closed up.

From Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz, trans. Stuart Woolf (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1958), 11, 109-115. Copyright © 1959 by Orion Press, copyright © 1958 by Giulio Einaudi editore S.p.A. Reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA). See also Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Summit, 1986); for two recent biographies, see Carole Angier, Primo Levi: The Double Bond (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002), and Ian Thomson, Primo Levi (London: Hutchinson, 2002).

38 A Woman Confronts the Holocaust Giuliana Tedeschi Giuliana Tedeschi was arrested along with her husband and mother-inlaw, on 8 March 1944. They were sent first to Fossoli, can internment camp in Italy, and then deported to Birkenau in October. In the waning days of the war, she was transferred to Auschwitz. Her husband and mother-in-law both perished in the camp, but her two infant daughters— entrusted to the care of their Catholic nurse—survived. A slave laborer at AuschwitzBirkenau, Tedeschi returned to Italy after the war and dedicated her life to teaching children in Italian schools about the Holocaust. The passage here is the introduction to her memoirs; she also describes the scene on Sunday, 25 June 1944, when she and forty-nine other women were forced to push empty baby carriages at Auschwitz-Birkenau after their children had been sent to the gas chambers. There is a place on earth, a desolate heath, where the shadows of the dead are multitudes, where the living are dead, where there is only death, hate, and pain. Surrounding the place and cutting it off from life are thick walls of darkness by night, and by day the infinity of space, the whistle of the wind, the cawing of crows, the stormy sky, the gray of the stones. You arrive, optimistic, by train after a long ride through the green woods of Bavaria and beside the cool rivers of Moldavia, landscapes you gaze at with the eyes of one who is still a tourist. But once the gate has closed and the barbed wire is behind you, you are in hell. The people here have dull, dilated eyes, dry and hostile. The new arrivals wait for time to pass and for their own eyes to become inexpressive and clouded, or to close forever from exhaustion and horror.

In the hut the lights all came on at once. The voice lashed out at the bunks, sharp and authoritative. “Aufstehen! Aufstehen!” In the bunks carved out one above the other in the walls, human forms, thickly packed as rabbits in their hutches, lay under rough army blankets. They were women who had arrived the day before from Italy, arrived in Upper Silesia, in Birkenau. “Aufstehen! Aufstehen und schnell die Betten machen.” The voice drew nearer. Goaded, the women sat up, threw back their blankets, and looked around in a daze. Each was alone, surrounded by strangers, crushed between the two bodies of her unknown companions left and right. They still belonged too much to the world they had left behind; they didn’t understand the world they had fallen into, didn’t understand that they had lost life’s most essential quality, the joy of living. At that moment of brusque awakening, the women felt only one thing with any clarity, their regret for the lost morning hour of drowsy slumber. Through the bright curtains the morning light fills the room with a diffuse glow. You lie on your bed with your eyes half-closed. In your semiconscious state your pupils register the daytime brightness. Then the whole outside world gradually penetrates, takes shape, weight, color, until at some imperceptible moment in the gradual stirring of the senses you find yourself distinct from the things around you, awake. This state of languor, suspended between dream and reality, this drowning in the infinite and rising to the surface again, escapes the notice of the conscious mind in the rhythm of normal life. On the night of April 11, 1944, the absence of that state of drowsiness before total awakening, the suddenness of the contact with an inconceivable reality, overwhelmed us all under a wave of nausea. Nausea to find our bodies covered with filthy rags and shapeless garments from which our skin shrank away in goose pimples while a cold shiver ran down our spines. Nausea at the sight of all that awkward, suffering humanity, ragged and dirty, reduced to a flock of huddling beasts. But there was still one small ray of light, and amid so much squalor hope shone all the more brightly. “Two, maybe three months and the war will be over....” “Two, maybe three months,” the men in the world “outside” were saying as they read in their papers of the Russian army’s swift, victorious advance across Romania. “Two, maybe three months ... the Russians will be at the German border, the English will have made their landing ... the war will be over.” “Two, maybe three months....” said the people arriving from France, from Holland, from Belgium. And the prisoners said to themselves, “We must hold on; just two, maybe three months more.” Wakened by the guards’ shouting, the women sat up, looked around, lost. They groped about in the mess of clothes and combs and half-eaten crusts of bread where margarine had been spread with a finger. The bread had the rough texture of sawdust. The margarine tasted rancid. No one was hungry. They bustled about pointlessly, desperate and humiliated. Underpants were

generally male, had no elastic or ties, wouldn’t stay up. Socks slipped down to the ankles, shirts still bore the stains of fleas that had lived on other bodies. Everything generated a sense of disgust and impotence. The bread, wrapped up in your clothes or thrust into pockets or wound in a rag tied to your belt, made your stomach turn. The few who had a piece of a comb would share it with their neighbors. In our bunks we began to disentangle rumpled hair, picking out stalks of straw that had come from the mattresses. When we put our hands into the warm, living mass of our hair, we realized that the women along the opposite wall were watching us and hurrying to cover their own completely shaved heads with horrible caps and berets. A week before we arrived, no prisoner had been admitted to the camp without having first been brutally deprived of every female grace, every aspect of her femininity. Despite being bundled up in filthy rags, faces half-hidden and distorted by their caps, all the women in the camp looked young, and some of them were beautiful. When the cry of “Zahlappell” echoed between the rows of bunks, they all climbed wearily down, holding on to the edge of their beds and pushing their toes between the bricks of the wall. Chased outside with shoves and shouts like a flock of sheep, the women huddled together, looking for the familiar faces of those who had been next to them in the bunks. Outside they found the huge darkness of the night. A lamp over the door to the hut cast an uncertain glow. A row of dark, becapped ghosts was formed. Again, one’s spirit was shaken by a tremor of grim foreboding. In the utter silence and dark light, the silhouettes of the other huts stood out. Row upon row of huts, all the same, hundreds of other dark shadows lined up before them. The place might have been tossed up that very night from the bowels of the earth, the way a volcano erupting at night can change a whole landscape; or it might have been the product of some haunted imagination: unique, unrepeatable, out of this world. No voices or noises reached the place, only the lacerating, spasmodic wail of a train fading away in the darkness in dispiriting echo. The cold bit into hands and feet, shoulder blades shook and shuddered with nervousness. The muscles in your back ached and shivers ran right down to your waist. Three big steaming wooden tubs appeared, each carried by four women prisoners. Enameled iron mess tins full of scalding tea were passed along the first row. Each tin had to do for five prisoners. With a sense of repugnance we laid our lips against the rim of the common tin. Two or three mouthfuls of the bitter liquid was as much as you could manage. This and the same thing in the afternoon were all we would have to drink all day. There was no drinking water. How long did those black ghosts stand there rigid in their rows? Maybe an hour, maybe two hours ... how could one know when there was nothing to evoke the convention of time? When you went back into the huts, dawn was just beginning to break. “You know,” said a voice, “what time they woke us? Half past three.”... Each face was stamped with a grimace of pain.... The strange procession moved forward: the mothers who had left children behind rested their hands on the push bars, instinctively feeling for the most natural position, promptly lifting the front wheels whenever they came to a

bump. They saw gardens, avenues, rosy infants asleep in their carriages under vaporous pink and pale blue covers. The women who had lost children in the crematorium felt a physical longing to have a child at their breast, while seeing nothing but a long plume of smoke that drifted away to infinity.... All the empty baby carriages screeched, bounced and banged into each other with the tired and desolate air of persecuted exiles. Giuliana Tedeschi, There is a Place on Each, trans. Tim Parks (New York: Pantheon, 1992), 1-6, 121. See also H. Marie Orton, “Deporting Identity: The Testimonies of Primo Levi and Giuliana Tedeschi,” in The Most Ancient of Minorities: The Jews of Italy, ed. Stanislao G. Pugliese (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2002), 303-14.

VII WAR: SPAIN, EUROPE, CIVIL

39 Tod ay in Spain, Tomorrow in Italy Carlo Rosselli Carlo Rosselli (1899-1937) was born into a wealthy Jewish family with strong ties to the Risorgimento. Abandoning a promising career as a professor of political economy, he joined the anti-fascist cause and was instrumental in publishing the first underground anti-fascist newspaper. Arrested for his activities, he was sentenced to confino on the island of Lipari, off the coast of Sicily. After a daring escape, he made his way to Paris where, in 1929, he founded Justice and Liberty, the largest and most influential nonMarxist leftist movement. From Paris, Rosselli wrote essays, organized the movement, and even plotted Mussolini’s assassination. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Rosselli was one of the first to arrive in Barcelona in defense of the Spanish republic. Rosselli believed that the Spanish Civil War had to be transformed into a European-wide offensive against fascism and Nazism. That idea, and this speech, given over Radio Barcelona on 13 November 1936, may have sealed his fate. An anonymous police spy wrote to Rome that Rosselli was “the most dangerous of the antifascists in exile” and that it was necessary that he be “suppressed.” While recuperating in the French countryside, Rosselli was assassinated, together with his brother, the noted historian Nello, on 9 June 1937. Comrades, brothers, Italians, listen. An Italian volunteer speaks to you from Radio Barcelona to bring you the greetings of the thousands of exiled Italian anti-fascists that are fighting in the ranks of the revolutionary army. An Italian column has fought for three months on the front in Aragon. Eleven dead, twenty wounded, the esteem of our Spanish comrades: here is the testimony of its sacrifice.

Carlo Rosselli (1899-1937) was one of the most influential and charismatic of the antifascist leaders. Escaping from prison, he founded the Justice and Liberty movement from exile in Paris. He was assassinated with his brother, the historian Nello Rosselli, on 9 June 1937—an event which became the basis of Alberto Moravia’s novel The Conformist and Bernardo Bertolucci’s film of the same name. (Courtesy of the Istituto Storico della Resistenza in Toscana, Florence.)

Banner of Justice and Liberty. (Courtesy of the Istituto Storico della Resistenza in Toscana, Florence.)

A second Italian column, formed just in these days, heroically defends Madrid. In all sectors of the front, Italian volunteers are found, men who having lost liberty in their own land, begin to regaining it in Spain, rifle in hand. Daily the Italian volunteers arrive: from France, from Belgium, from Switzerland, from the distant Americas. Wherever there are Italian communities, committees are being formed for proletarian Spain. Even from oppressed Italy volunteers depart and arrive in Spain. In our ranks we count dozens of companions who have crossed the frontier covertly, risking a thousand dangers. The young ones who have abandoned the university, the factory, even the barracks, fight alongside anti-fascist veterans. They have deserted the bourgeois war to participate in the revolutionary war. Italians, listen. This is an Italian volunteer who speaks to you from the radio from Barcelona. A century ago enslaved Italy kept silent and quivered under the heel of Austria, of the Bourbons, of the Savoy, of the priests. Every effort of liberation was brutally repressed. Those people who were not in jail were forced into exile. But in exile they did not renounce the struggle. Santarosa in Greece, Garibaldi in America, Mazzini in England, Pisacane in France, together with so many others, no longer able to fight in their country, struggled for the freedom of other peoples, showing to the world that Italians were worthy of living freely. From those sacrifices, from those examples, the Italian cause was consecrated. The Italians reacquired faith in their strengths. Today a new tyranny oppresses us—a great deal more ferocious and humiliating than the ancient one. It is not longer the foreigner that dominates. It is we who have allowed a factious minority to subdue us; using the strengths of privilege, it holds in fetters the working class and the thought of all Italians. Every effort seems vain against the massive, dictatorial army. But we don’t lose faith. We know that dictatorships pass away and that the people remain. Spain furnishes us with the pulsating proof. Nobody speaks anymore of De Rivera. Nobody will speak tomorrow about Mussolini. And as in the Risorgimento, in the darkest time, when almost nobody dared to hope, from abroad the example and the incitement came, so today we are convinced that the modest effort of the Italian volunteers will find tomorrow a powerful will for redemption. It is with this secret hope that we have hastened to Spain: today here, tomorrow in Italy. Brothers, Italian comrades, listen. This is an Italian volunteer who speaks to you from the radio in Barcelona. Don’t believe the false news of the fascist press, which depicts the revolutionary Spanish people like hordes of bloodthirsty crazy persons on the eve of defeat. The revolution in Spain is triumphant. Every day it penetrates more and more into the depth of the life of people, renewing institutes, correcting secular injustices. Madrid has not fallen and it won’t fall. When it already seemed inevitable that it would succumb, a marvelous uprising of people halted the invasion and began the counteroffensive. The motto of the revolutionary militia, which until then was “No pasarán” [they shall not pass] has become “Pasaremos” [we will pass]; that is, not the fascists but us, the revolutionary ones, will overcome.

Catalonia, Valencia, the whole Mediterranean littoral, Bilbao and one hundred other cities, the richest zone, the most evolved and industrious of Spain, is solidly in the hands of revolutionary forces. A new order has been born, based on liberty and social justice. In the workshops, the boss no longer commands, but the collective, through suggestions of factory and labor unions. In the fields, one no longer finds wage earners forced to do a weary job in the interests of others. The farmer is master of land that he works under the control of the local town hall. In the offices, the employees, the technicians no longer obey a hierarchy of “daddy’s boys,” but a new hierarchy founded on ability and free choice. They obey, or better they collaborate, because in revolutionary Spain and above all in libertarian Catalonia, the most audacious social conquests are made respecting the personality of the man and the autonomy of human groups. Communism, yes, but libertarian communism. Socialization of the large industries and largescale commerce but no idolatry of the state: the socialization of the means of production and exchange. This is conceived as a means to freeing man from all slavery. The experience in progress in Spain is of extraordinary interest for everybody. Here, there is no dictatorship, no military economy, no denial of the values of the west but conciliation of the most ardent social reforms with liberty. There is no one party that, pretending to be infallible, seizes the revolution: anarchists, communists, socialists, republicans all collaborate for the public, at the front, in social life. What a lesson for us Italians! Brothers, Italians, comrades, listen. An Italian volunteer speaks to you from the radio in Barcelona to bring you the greetings of the Italian volunteers. On the other bank of the Mediterranean a new world is being born. It is the anti-fascist uprising that begins in the West. From Spain it will conquer Europe. Above all, it will arrive in Italy, so near to Spain in language, traditions, climate, customs and tyrants. It will arrive because history cannot be arrested, progress continues, dictatorships are parentheses in the life of the people, almost a whip to spur them, after a period of inactivity and abandonment, to take back in hand their destiny and fate. Italian brothers who live in the fascist jail, I would like that you were able, just for an instant at least, to plunge yourselves in the intoxicating atmosphere in which this marvelous people have been living for months, despite all the difficulties. I wish that you could go in the workshops to see the enthusiasm that the people have for the fighting comrades; I wish that you could cross the countryside and read on the face of the farmers the boldness of this new dignity and above all to cross the front and to talk to the volunteer militiamen. Fascism, which cannot trust any of the soldiers who pass en masse to our lines, must resort to mercenaries of all types. Instead, the proletarian barracks swarm with a crowd of young people pleading for weapons. A month of this life, spent for human ideals, is worth more than ten years of vegetation or false imperial mirages in Mussolini’s Italy. And don’t believe the fascist press when it paints Catalonia, largely anarchist/syndicalist, prey to terror and disorder. Catalan anarchism is a constructive socialism, sensitive to the problems of liberty and culture. Every day it furnishes proofs of its realistic qualities. The reforms are completed with order, without following preconceived schemes and always taking

into account experience. Barcelona has given us the best proof, where, despite the difficulties of the war, life continues to unwind regularly and the public services work better than they did before. Italians who listen to the radio of Barcelona, attention. Volunteer Italians fighting in Spain, in the interest and for the ideal of a whole people that struggle for its liberty, ask you to prevent that fascism continues its criminal work in favor of Franco and of the factious generals. Every day airplanes furnished by Italian fascism and driven by mercenary aviators who dishonor our country, launch bombs against unarmed cities, tearing to pieces women and children. Every day, Italian bullets, built with Italian hands, transported by Italian ships, launched by Italian guns, fall in the trenches of the workers. Franco would already have lost some time ago, if it had not been for the powerful help of fascism. What shame it is for Italians to know that their own government—the government of a people who was once in the vanguard of the struggle for liberty—tries to murder the liberty of Spanish people! Proletarian Italy, awake. Stop this shame. Italian factories and Italian harbors should not send any more murderous weapons. Where open boycotting is not possible, resort to secret sabotage. The Italian people must not become the police officer of Europe. Brothers, Italian comrades, an Italian volunteer speaks from the radio of Barcelona in the name of thousands of Italian fighters. Here one fights, one dies, but one also wins for liberty and the emancipation of all the people. Italians, help the Spanish revolution. Prevent fascism from supporting the factious and fascist generals. Collect money, and if, for repeated persecutions or for insurmountable difficulty you are not able in your center to fight the dictatorship effectively, hasten to strengthen the columns of volunteer Italians in Spain. The faster proletarian Spain wins, the sooner will come the time for the uprising of the Italian people. Italy is a great country, yes, but in the workshop the despotic master commands. Italy is great, yes, but if someone dares to say what he has in his heart, he is quickly caught by the Special Tribunal. Italy is great, yes, but there is a racket in the schools, in the professions, in the offices: the reign of fascist officials, secretaries, under-secretaries, relatives of the secretaries and under-secretaries, while the noblest spirits of our country are forced into the most disheartening silence. We are in short great, imperial, strong ... but we don’t enjoy a simple, elementary law: to live as men, hut-manly, to the service of those two ideal principles for which life is only worthy, by which societies progress: justice and liberty. To you Italians I speak. Free Italians, courage! On the other shore of the Mediterranean a new world is born. The revolution arrives, triumphant, against fascism, anti-fascism.... For centuries our Spanish brothers were enslaved, as in Italy and other countries.... You know the history.... But the people this time are ready. People, not the government.... Those people who believe by now that the revolution will fail are dreaming. The revolution wins.... It is a natural and inevitable phenomenon. The men who have slacked their thirst at the eternal source of liberty—of a positive liberty, not only political, but economic and social—

those men are determined that they will no longer return to servitude. Rather than surrender, they will defeat everyone. Carlo Rosselli, “Oggi in Spagna, domani in Italia” in Oggi in Spagna, domani in Italia (Turin: Einaudi, 1967), 70-75; trans. Stanislao G. Pugliese. See also Stanislao G. Pugliese, Carlo Rosselli: Socialist Heretic and Antifascist Exile (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999).

40 November 1943 Renata Viganò An active participant in the armed Resistance, Renata Viganò (1900-1976) wrote what is widely acknowledged to be one of the finest novels of the Resistance experience, L’Agnese va a morire. Fighting alongside her husband, a commander of the Garibaldi Brigades, Viganò created in Agnese a memorable protagonist. An elderly peasant who has never traveled far beyond her orchard, Agnese joins the Resistance after- her husband is executed by the Nazis. Taking her rusty old bicycle into the marshes with the partisans, Agnese struggles against doubt, nature, betrayals, and fascism. In Agnese, Viganò has captured the innate sense of justice and outrage felt by a large segment of Italian society. Here, in a short story, Viganò depicts the physical and moral ruins of Italy during World War II. The rubble was gray under a gray sky. An entire street, an entire neighborhood, destroyed. The buildings had been tall and full of people. Toward evening the doors opened and closed, families sat down at the table, they stretched out in their beds so that they could get up in the clear and transparent light of a September morning. One of those mornings, so clear and lucid, with the sun shining on the old walls and through small windows, the air force had dropped clusters of incendiary bombs that pierced, penetrated, shattered. The houses folded as if they had been sucked up, four and five floors reduced to a pile of a few meters, and the rest collapsing, caving into the basements. The landscape became a horizon of a few spare walls left standing, still some square footage of rooms painted light blue or pink or green, with some misshapen, random piece of roof balanced on a shattered beam. The street had become a narrow, oblique path running between sad slopes of broken stones, dust, mud, and leftovers here and there, dark and unrecognizable. Everything was abandoned and deserted, after the screams and sobs and effort with which the dead had been carried away—those who could be, for there were others who were left underneath or who had been so disfigured that it was necessary to just give up. The latter had

found their burial in the very moment the bomb had reduced them to nothing, and maybe they had actually suffered less and caused those who searched for them and who had not found them, not seen them, to suffer less. In this way they vanished and were easier to forget. It was among that gray rubble that Roberto advanced, in the cold of a November day, searching for the ruins of his home. Luckily he had no deaths to cry about. His family had saved themselves hiding in the hills, watching the bombardment with the relief of being far away and knowing they had their best things with them—furniture, utensils, linens. But he, Roberto, knew what he had left down there, hiding in a hole in the wall, and he wanted to attempt the difficult retrieval. Without his fragile mother knowing, crying and fearful as she was, with his indifferent brothers and sisters, Roberto belonged to the Resistance. And now he wanted to find the arms, two revolvers and a musket, hidden with such painful conniving from the unconscious hostility of his family. He recognized on a wall the old color of the family’s kitchen where as a child he had done his homework on the cluttered table while his mother washed dishes, and Marisa and Silvana put make-up on to go to the movies, and Pietro and Carlo pooled their small earnings to buy a ticket for a soccer game. Who knows where he had gotten so much hatred for the Fascists in that squalid, stupid atmosphere. His father had been dead a long time, but he imagined him fighting against the Fascists, due to certain words he had heard old friends say about him, friends who had known him and who regretted having lost him too soon. He remembered a big man who had come to their home one evening, spoken brusquely to Pietro and Carlo, and left saying, “You don’t understand who your father was.” He had never seen this man again, but that phrase stayed in his mind forever, and only much later did he understand the true meaning. Because of this, Roberto had managed to have a world of his own, a different, constant, and desperate world. And in the end he had managed to get arms, and now he was going to get them, in the heart of the house and the street that had been the scenes of his fervid and confused passion as an adolescent. Climbing over rocks and bricks, he reached a hollow that corresponded to the stairway. He slipped down the steps toward the basement, and at that point he heard a sound, a cautious step among the ruins. He lifted his head and saw before him a well-known face, Signor Vittorio, a neighbor from the floor above, a Fascist. He was still in his black shirt, under his civilian jacket. “Ciao, Roberto,” said the man, curving over him from above in the half-light of the basement. “What are you doing down there?” “I came to get something for my mother,” he answered. “Something that was left here.” He was immediately sorry about what he’d said, and a shiver passed through his spine. But Signor Vittorio pulled back, disappeared, and Roberto could hear his distant voice, “What a disaster, eh? Good-bye, Roberto!” He quickly recognized his hiding spot, where he lingered, perplexed, his hands gripping the bag containing the musket; then he decided against it and buried it again behind the bricks of the wall. He put only the two revolvers in his pocket. “That one there is a damned nuisance,

but he can’t do anything to me if I leave empty-handed.” But even empty-handed he felt suspect and vulnerable, and so he took a small ten-liter demijohn of wine. On the ruined doorstep he was attacked by the same voice. “Your mother had hidden the wine, eh?” “Wine?” Roberto said, looking at the flask. “We need this for water. Where we’re staying there’s very little drinkable water.” Inside him an unvoiced anger was growing, to have to give so many explanations. But in the pockets of his jacket under the light raincoat, he felt the hard weight of the weapons, and he felt stronger knowing that he had escaped unharmed from the adventure. “Good-bye, Signor Vittorio,” he said, and he started to walk decisively along the narrow street among the rocks and dust. He didn’t know if the man was following him; he didn’t dare turn around. He went ahead, looking around the neighborhood where he had been born, where he had grown up, where he knew every color of the walls, every stone in the sidewalk, but which now seemed to him new and remote, no longer re-constructible from memory, changed forever in the design of its fundamental lines, a vague horizon, battered, and oscillating like in dreams. He met a small old woman who was pushing a cart loaded with things. They greeted each other cordially, like neighbors, but both were too taken with their own efforts to stop and chat. Only now Roberto, when she had passed by, pushing the shafts with effort, found the pretext for looking behind himself, and askance at his Fascist neighbor. And it was then that he saw in the distance, dark and heavy against the dull landscape of the bombed houses, two soldiers of the National Republican Guard. He recognized them as such, peering intently, by their huge gray-green uniforms, and especially by the awkward, large, white pants turned up on the shins. “They are looking for me,” he thought in a flash, “and he sent them.” All of a sudden he threw the flask aside and started to run. They followed him. Roberto heard the pounding sound of their running against the sound of his own running. It had surely been the Fascist, that spiteful man from upstairs who for so many years he’d seen go out in his black shirt and his fez with the bow. He had informed those two GNRs so that they’d chase him down. They had all the papers they needed to get him because he had been a soldier on September 8. He had abandoned his company, the regiment, and had escaped, crossing unknown fields until a family of peasants had done something to dress him up in civilian clothes, giving him the possibility of finally returning home. He had barely had the time to get his mother and siblings up into the hills, and to find in a stroke of luck one of his father’s old friends, to let him know that he had the arms hidden in a hole in the basement. It had gone too well up to now, everything had gone his way. And now, instead, he was escaping through an unknown and deserted part of town, followed by two military men to whom details and precise orders had been furnished by a well-informed enemy. In the lightening-sharp sequence of these thoughts, Roberto found his salvation. At the first intersection he turned rapidly, finding a closet that was still standing, and he hurled himself into the dark like a fox. But there, too, he hit against a wall of rubble and had to stop, falling

down with a lacerating pain in a swollen ankle. He hoped the soldiers would pass by him as they ran. Instead, they stopped. “He went in here,” said a voice, and little by little he saw the outline of the two shadows advance in the foggy light of the entrance. He put his hands in his pocket and took the safety off the pistols. “I’d rather kill them,” he thought vaguely, and an immense indolence assaulted him in the same moment, an enormous sense of depression that resembled the fear of no longer being capable of anything. Maybe the same terror had attacked even the two who had the advantage of strength in numbers, but they also needed to go further in that very dark hole where he, the armed enemy, was hiding. So everyone was completely still, protected and immobile, like in a dead period of a trench war. The long, cold time passed in silence. Roberto, in his little corner among the rocks, almost fell asleep. But all of a sudden he moved abruptly, feeling like a shock the need for action, for movement, for freedom. He couldn’t stay there forever with those two guards outside, blocked by a present but unseen force that made it all the more threatening and inexorable. He scraped along the wall with his heart beating loud and painfully against his ribs. He came up next to the pale design of the open door, where he could see the two soldiers at some distance; he heard their voices in a hesitating volley. With a jump he flung himself out, desperately throwing himself into a run on the resonant stones of the street, and fear lent him an unthinkable speed. He realized that he had gained time and space on those who were following him and that it would be difficult for them to catch him. He turned at a corner and disappeared into an alley. Now he was running free and loose in the miserable, ruined streets, among destroyed houses with empty windows through which you could see the sky, dark in the November dusk. He knew where he was going; certainly not to his family that had taken refuge in the hills, where they were safe. He was headed for another part of the city, a sure and hidden place that seemed like the best solution to his many throbbing perplexities. And it was in that precise moment that a whistle of an air-raid alarm helped him, a tremulous and mournful signal, with a simultaneous slow lighting of a Bengal flare that lit up the unprotected city. Roberto came running out of the destroyed and deserted neighborhoods, crossing the small, dark streets until he reached the center. And without any fear, he inserted himself in the columns of scared people who were running to reach the shelters. He heard their screams and moans; he left them behind at each basement stair to run farther, happy and light with thoughts as agile as his legs. He touched the weapons in his pockets and repeated in the rhythm of his breath: “I made it, I made it.” When the oppressive silence of the wait fell like a curtain on the city, and all that was living seemed still, terrified, and buried, he walked as if he were taking a stroll toward the small house on the outskirts where he knew he would find his predesignated spot. He got there without hurrying, with even breath, so he wouldn’t appear to be escaping. He knocked on a well-known door; it opened and he murmured his name in the darkness. He found himself in a warm, well-lit kitchen, in the middle of a circle of jovial and questioning faces. A woman put a bowl of soup on the table for him, and a glass of wine. She told him to eat first, then drink. His father’s old friend stood in front of him; when Roberto started to speak, he shook his white head and said, “Eat. We’ll talk later.”

Roberto felt fine, so fine that two tears of joy fell shining on his hot cheeks. Then the man with the white hair sat down near him and said, “Now tell me everything,” as if he were awaiting a long story. Instead, Roberto spoke in brief sentences, interrupting himself as if the past fear and the present passion burned in him like a fire. “I left the musket there,” he said. “I couldn’t get it because that Fascist was watching me. It was him; I don’t know his name, but he’s been our neighbor for many years. He launched the military guards after me; he knew who my father was and that I escaped on the eighth of September. He wanted to get me with the weapons, have me shot or sent to Germany. Or maybe he told the soldiers that I was a scavenger in the rubble. All I could do was run.” He lowered his eyes in shame, hesitating. “I was afraid,” he confessed hurriedly, and he stayed there a while in silence. “But now I know what I have to do,” he began again, his voice dry and resolved. “Send me to the mountains with the partisans. Excuse me, but you will not regret having done it.” The old man with the white hair smiled. “Of course we’ll send you,” he said, and Roberto smiled, too, happily. “I would like to warn my mother,” he added timidly. “So that she’s not worried and waiting for me. And I’m sorry about the musket.” “We’ll tell your mother,” the old man declared. “And we’ll get the musket. And maybe even the neighbor.” Renata Viganò, Partisan Wedding, trans. Suzanne Branciforte (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), 75-83. Copyright © 1999 by the Curators of the University of Missouri. Reprinted by permission of the University of Missouri Press.

41 The Dead God Curzio Malaparte Born Kart Eric Suckert, Curzio Malaparte (1898-1957) participated in the “March on Rome” and was active as a Florentine blackshirt. His review, La Conquista dello stato, argued for a revolutionary, violent fascism that glorified squadrismo, as opposed to the more “respectable” variant in power. Malaparte was caught between his role as a cosmopolitan intellectual and his desire to create a fascist culture. “He rejected futurism as being too foreign” and tried to forge a fascist populism. This was most visibly expressed in the Strapaese movement, which, advocated a rural and provincial aesthetic, and in its literary review Il Selvaggio of Florence. Here, Malaparte depicts the degradation and destruction of the Nazi occupation and Allied invasion in Naples. Every evening Jimmy and I used to go down to the harbor to read the list posted up on the gates outside the harbor master’s office, giving the order of embarkation of the American units and the date of departure of the ships which sailed from Naples carrying the troops of the Fifth Army back to America. “It isn’t my turn yet,” Jimmy would say, spitting on the ground. And we would go and sit on a small bench beneath the trees of the vast square situated in front of the harbor, and overlooked by the towering mass of the Maschio Angioino. I had been eager to accompany Jimmy to Naples so that I might remain with him until the last moment and bid him farewell on the gangway of the ship that would take him back to America. Of all those American friends of mine with whom I had for two years shared the dangers of war and the melancholy joy of liberation only Jimmy was now left to me—Jimmy Wren, of Cleveland, Ohio, an officer in the Signal Corps. All the others were scattered about Europe— in Germany, France and Austria—or had gone back home to America, or had died for me, for us, for my country, like Jack and Camphell. For me, the day on which I said good-bye to him forever on the ship’s gangway would be like those other days on which I had said good-bye

forever to poor Jack and poor Campbell. I should be left alone, among my own people, in my own country. For the first time in my life I should be left alone, truly alone.

Hitler visits Florence, May 1938. (Courtesy of Robert Miller, Enigma Books.)

As soon as the shadows of evening crept along the walls, and the vast black breath of the sea darkened the green leaves of the trees and the red facades of the houses, a dingy, sluggish, silent mob would emerge from the thousand alleys of Toledo and invade the square. It was the Neapolitan mob—legendary, primeval, pitiable. But something within it had died: its joy in the knowledge of its hunger, and even its wretchedness, were sad. pale, dead. Gradually the evening would climb out of the sea, and the mob would lift its tear-reddened eyes and watch Vesuvius loom up, white, cold and spectral against the black sky. Not a wisp of smoke ascended from the mouth of the crater, not the palest glimmer of fire illuminated the volcano’s lofty brow. The mob would linger mutely for hour after hour, deep into the night, then silently disperse. Left alone in the vast square, with the black expanse of the sea before us, Jimmy and I would move off, turning round every so often to watch the great white corpse on the rim of the horizon slowly dissolving into the night. In April, 1944, having rocked the earth and spewed up torrents of fire for many days, Vesuvius had spent its fury. It had not subsided gradually, but abruptly. Its brow enveloped in a pall of icy clouds, it had suddenly uttered a great cry, and the chill of death had turned its veins of burning lava to stone. The God of Naples, the totem of the Neapolitan populace, was dead. An immense shroud of black crape had descended upon the city, and the bay, and the hill of Posilipo. The people walked about the streets on tiptoe, conversing in low voices, as if every house sheltered a corpse. A doleful silence brooded over the mourning city. The voice of Naples, the ancient, noble voice of hunger, pity, grief, joy and love, the loud, hoarse, resonant, gay, triumphant voice of Naples was stilled. And whenever the fires of sunset, or the silvery radiance of the moon, or the rays of the rising sun appeared to inflame the white spectra of the volcano, a cry, a piercing cry, as of a woman in travail, went up from the city. All the people appeared at the windows, rushed into the streets and embraced one another, shedding tears of joy, intoxicated by the hope that by some miracle warmth had returned to the lifeless veins of the volcano, and that the crimson touch of the setting sun, or the radiance of the moon, or the shy glimmer of dawn, presaged the resurrection of Vesuvius, the dead god whose immense, naked corpse filled the sombre sky of Naples. But soon this hope gave way to rage and disillusionment. Eyes were dried, and the mob, unclasping hands which they had joined in an attitude of prayer, raised threatening fists or cocked a snook at the volcano, mingling entreaties and laments with their imprecations and insults, crying: “Have pity on us, curse you! Son of a harlot, have mercy on us!” Then came the days of the new moon; and when the moon slowly rose above the chill slopes of Vesuvius an oppressive melancholy descended upon Naples. The lunar dawn lit up the lifeless deserts of purple ashes and the livid rocks of cold lava, which looked like boulders of black ice. Sporadic groans and wails arose from the depths of the dark alleys, and the fishermen who lay along the beaches of Santa Lucia, Mergellina and Posilipo, sleeping on the warm sand beneath the keels of their boats, emerged from slumber, raised themselves on to their elbows and turned their heads toward the spectra of the volcano, listening in trepidation

to the moaning of the waves and the sporadic sobbing of the seagulls. The shells glistened on the sand, and at the edge of the sky, which was covered with silvery fishes’ scales, Vesuvius lay rotting like a dead shark that has been cast ashore by the waves. One August evening, as we were returning from Amalfi, we saw a long line of reddish flames moving up the volcano’s slopes toward the mouth of the crater. We asked a fisherman what these lights were. They came from a procession which was carrying votive offerings to Vesuvius in the hope of allaying its wrath and persuading it not to abandon its people. Following a day of prayer in the Sanctuary of Pompeii a long column of women, boys and old men, headed by a band of priests clad in sacred vestments and by young men carrying the banners and standards of the Brotherhoods and great black crucifixes, was advancing up the highway which leads from Bosco Treccase to the crater. Some were weeping, others were praying. Some were waving olive sprays, pine branches, and vine-shoots rich with clusters of grapes. Some carried jars of wine and hampers filled with goat’s cheese, fruit and bread, others copper trays laden with buns and whey tarts, others yet lambs, fowls, rabbits and baskets filled with fish. Having reached the crest of Vesuvius the barefooted, tattered multitude, whose faces and hair were begrimed with ashes, silently followed the chanting priests into the vast amphitheater of the old crater. The russet moon climbed above the distant mountains of Cilento, which appeared blue and silver in the green mirror of the sky. The night was deep and warm. Here and there the sound of weeping arose from the mob, and stifled groans, loud, harsh cries, and voices hoarse with fear and grief. Every so often one would sink to his knees and poke his fingers into the cracks in the cold lava crust as if probing the fissures in the marble flagstones of a tomb, in order to feel whether the ancient fire still burned in the veins of the volcano; then, withdrawing his hand, he would cry in a voice broken with anguish and horror: “He’s dead! He’s dead!” At the words a great wail would go up from the mob, accompanied by the thumping of fists on breasts and bellies and the shrill groans of the faithful as they mortified their flesh with their nails and teeth. The old crater is in the form of a shell almost a mile across. Its jagged rim is black with lava and yellow with sulphur. Here and there the deposits of lava, after cooling off, have taken on human shapes, the aspect of gigantic men, intertwined like wrestlers in a dark, silent affray. These are the lava statues which the inhabitants of the Vesuvian villages call “the slaves,” perhaps in memory of the hordes of slaves who had followed Spartacus and, while they awaited the signal to revolt, had lived in hiding for many months among the vineyards which covered the slopes and summit of peaceful Vesuvius before the sudden eruption that destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii. The moon awoke that army of slaves, who slowly loosed themselves from the shackles of sleep and, raising their arms, moved through the red mist of the moon toward the crowd of the faithful. In the middle of the vast amphitheater of the old crater rises the cone of the new, which, now mute and cold, had continued for nearly two thousand years to spew up flames, ashes, stones, and rivers of lava. Clambering up the rugged slopes of the cone the mob had collected around the mouth of the extinct volcano and, weeping and shouting, were flinging their votive offerings

—bread, fruit and whey tarts—into the monster’s black jaws, while over the lava rocks they sprinkled wine and the blood of the lambs, fowls and rabbits, whose throats they had cut and which they afterwards threw, still quivering with life, into the depths of the abyss. Jimmy and I had reached the summit of Vesuvius just as the mob, having performed that most ancient propitiatory rite, had thrown themselves to their knees and, tearing their hair and clawing their faces and breasts, were mingling liturgical chants and lamentations with prayers to the miraculous Virgin of Pompeii and invocations of their cruel and unfeeling god Vesuvius. As the moon, like a blood-soaked sponge, climbed into the sky, so the tone of the wails and litanies was raised and the voices became shriller and more heartrending, until the mob, seized with a wild, despairing fury and hurling imprecations and insults, began to fling pieces of lava and handfuls of ashes into the mouth of the volcano. Meanwhile a great wind had arisen, and a dense mass of clouds, accompanied by flashes of lightning, was emerging from the sea, propelled by the sirocco. Very soon it enveloped the crest of Vesuvius. Amid those yellow clouds, driven by the thunderbolts, the great black crucifixes and the banners, which the gusts of wind buffeted unmercifully, appeared enormous, and the men looked like giants. The litanies, the imprecations and the wails of the mob seemed to well up from the smoke and flames of an inferno which had suddenly opened up beneath it. At length, first the band of priests, then the standard-bearers of the Brotherhoods, and finally the crowd of the faithful rushed headlong down the sides of the cone, beneath the rain that was already hissing down through the rents in the clouds, and disappeared into the sulphurous darkness which had meanwhile invaded the vast shell of the older crater. Left alone, Jimmy and I set off for the spot where we had parked our jeep. It seemed to me that I was walking on the cold crust of a dead planet. We, perhaps, were the last two men in creation, the only two human beings to have survived the destruction of the world. When we reached the crater’s edge the storm had passed, and a pale moon was shining out of a deep green sky. We sat down under the lee of a lava rock, surrounded by the crowd of “slaves” who had by now resumed the likeness of cold black statues. For a long while we remained where we were, contemplating the squalid face of the earth and the sea, the scattered houses at the foot of the extinct volcano, the islands that drifted far away on the horizon, and, down below, the heap of dead stones that was Naples. We were living men in a dead world. I was no longer ashamed of being a man. What did it matter to me whether men were innocent or guilty? The earth contained only living men and dead men. All the rest counted for nothing. All the rest was nothing but fear, despair, repentance, hatred, bitterness, forgiveness and hope. We were on the summit of an extinct volcano. The fire which for thousands of years had burned the veins of this mountain, of this soil, of the whole earth, had suddenly been quenched, and now little by little the ground was cooling beneath our feet. That city down below us, standing on the shore of a sea covered with a shining crust, beneath a sky heavy with storm clouds, was inhabited not, indeed, by the innocent and the guilty, the victors and the vanquished, but by living men who were roaming about in search of the means to allay their hunger and dead men who lay buried beneath the

ruins of the houses. Down below, as far as my eye could see, the earth was covered with thousands and thousands of corpses. Those dead men would have been nothing but putrid flesh had there not been among them Someone who had sacrificed Himself for the others in order to save the world, in order that all, innocent and guilty, victors and vanquished, who had survived those years of blood and sorrow should not have cause to feel ashamed of being men. Assuredly among those thousands and thousands of dead there lay the body of some Christ. What would have become of the world, and of us all, if among all those dead there had not been one Christ? “What need is there for another Christ?” said Jimmy. “Christ has saved the world already, once and for all.” “Oh, Jimmy, why won’t you understand that all those men would have died in vain if there were no Christ among them? Why won’t you understand that there must be thousands and thousands of Christs among all those corpses? Even you know it isn’t true that Christ saved the world once and for all. Christ died to teach us that every one of us can become Christ, that every man can save the world by his own sacrifice. Christ too would have died in vain if it were not possible for every man to become Christ and to save the world.” “A man is only a man,” said Jimmy. “Oh, Jimmy, why won’t you understand that it isn’t necessary for a man to be the Son of God, to rise again from the dead on the third day, and to sit on the right hand of the Father, in order to be Christ? It is those thousands and thousands of dead men who have saved the world, Jimmy.” “You attach too much importance to the dead,” said Jimmy. “A man counts only if he’s alive. A dead man is merely a dead man.” “Here in Europe,” I said, “only the dead count.” “I’m tired of living among the dead,” said Jimmy. “I’m content to go back home to America, where I’ll be surrounded by living men. Why don’t you come to America as well? You’re a living man. America is a rich and happy country.” “I know America is a rich and happy country, Jimmy. But I won’t go—I must stay here. I’m not a coward, Jimmy. And then, even misery, hunger, fear and hope are wonderful things— more so than riches, more so than happiness.” “Europe is a dump heap;” said Jimmy, “a wretched, defeated continent. Come with us. America is a free country.” “I can’t desert my dead, Jimmy. You are taking your dead to America. Every day ships sail for America laden with dead—dead who are rich, happy and free. But my dead cannot pay their fare to America—they are too poor. They will never know the meaning of riches, happiness and freedom. They have always lived in slavery; they have always been victims of hunger and fear. They will always be slaves, they will always be victims of hunger and fear, even though they are dead. It’s their destiny, Jimmy. If you knew that Christ was lying among

them, among those wretched corpses, would you desert Him?” “You’re not suggesting,” said Jimmy, “that Christ has lost the war too!” “It is a shameful thing to win a war,” I said in a low voice. Curzio Malaparte, The Skin, trans. David Moore (Malboro, Vt.: Malboro, 1988), 337-44.

42 Prisoner of War Giampiero Carocci Written in 1948 but not published until 2954, The Officers Camp made public a little-known aspect of World War II: the experience of Italian prisoners of war. Carocci was born in Florence and was an officer in the Italian Army. Defeat in 1943 led to an Armistice with the Alllies: the Italians--initially Germany’s allies—were now considered enemies. Conditions in the camps varied. The Italian officers found themselves. in an intermediate world: worse off than the British and American POWs but infinitely better than the Russians. In tone, language, and style, Carocci’s memoir is similar to Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz. For Carocci, the camp experience was paradoxical for it not only laid bare cruelty and despair but also generated inspiration and hope. The camp was occupied almost entirely by Russians. We took up only a small part of it. In the other camp that we had caught sight of, half-hidden in the fog on the day of our arrival, were housed American and French soldiers. We often saw the Russians. Several of them who were employed in the camp maintenance services even came into our barracks when there was some small repair to be made. At such times animated conversations took place in a strange language composed of a little German, a little Russian, and many gestures. They were almost all handsome young men, always cheerful, and with bright, intelligent eyes. They were well dressed and fed. They spoke with a great deal of pride about what was being accomplished in Russia. The customs of the West, and any comparison with their own, did not interest them. There was one boy of fifteen with whom we formed a particular friendship. He was named Kostya, and everyone liked him. When he turned up among us, we all called him and wanted to talk with him. Kostya ran everywhere, exchanging a word here, a jest there, and cheered us up

with his laughter. Then he told us about his life in Kharkhov, his studies, etc. He belonged to the auxiliary services of the Russian army. His lot was like that of many other boys, some even younger than he, who roamed the camp dressed just like the Russian troops with boots, blue trousers, and tunics with high collars. It was a sight both comic and moving to see these miniature soldiers; they did not make an impression at all like that of our Balilla and Avanguardisti, because their uniforms were the same as the army’s, only smaller. Furthermore, there were still younger beings wandering about the camp, children (some of them were five or six years old) who had been caught up by the hand of war, separated from their families, and flung into concentration camps. They were covered by a few rags, and they hunted for cigarettes. At first I was astonished by the difference between the Russians employed at some job inside the camp and the vast anonymous and ragged masses that we had seen on the day of our arrival and so many other times since then. Later I understood that this phenomenon was, in part, the law of nature that held in the concentration camp. Among us, too, without our being aware of it, a harsh distinction was being drawn between those who were holding up better and those who were worse, between those who received many packages and grew fat and those who were dying. But apart from this universal law, there were other differences among the Russians; it seemed that the law of the concentration camp was not a cruel although ineluctable novelty for them, but a fact already taken into account, almost an atavistic habit. The best, the most intelligent, were well fed and clothed. In contrast was the huge, tattered mass of peasants and Mongols, consumed by hunger and sickness and beaten by clubs, who looked on with their resigned and indifferent expressions, and moved without speaking in the directions indicated by the dry commands of their overseers. These overseers were almost always Russians themselves who belonged to the first category. The Germans rarely intervened in person. It appeared that they understood very well the characteristics of the Russian social order, and they made use of it for their own ends in the most scientific manner. Certain it is that I never understood Tolstoy and Lenin so well as when I observed these prisoners. The Russians went to get their rations at their own kitchen, which was located in a part of the camp distant from us. Once, I don’t remember for what reason, I happened to pass that way while the distribution was taking place. In front of the kitchen was an endless square where the Russians were lined up. They filled it entirely, leaving only a small space free between the first rank and the kitchen shed. They held their mess tins and spoons in their hands, which knocked against one another as their arms moved. No one spoke. They waited without any signs of impatience. It almost seemed that they had no desire to eat. Suddenly the sound of a whistle was heard. Immediately they all became still and the noise of the mess tins ceased. One could hear the slight hiss of the wind as it moved among the barracks. A mess tin fell to the ground with a deafening racket. Then the whistle was blown for the second time. Beginning with the rank on the left, the Russians approached the kitchen one after another, held out their mess tins, and went away without comment or protest, as if that soup on which their lives depended meant nothing to them. Now and then a whistle was heard, then everyone stopped still. A tub of the ration was finished and the cooks were exchanging it for a full one. When the operation was over, the whistle sounded again and the Russians began to move once more. We saw Russians die every day. The cause of death was almost always tuberculosis. The

regime they were subjected to was not such as to make them die directly of hunger, but after a year or two (depending on their physical condition) it made them sick, and sickness was always fatal. A corner of the camp was set aside for those with tuberculosis. The barracks were surrounded by barbed wire; at the entrance a yellow flag was fixed and a notice on which the letters TBC were written. I once passed in front of these barracks. Some Russians looked at me from behind the barbed wire; they moved slowly and wore expressions filled with a mortal weariness. When they were close to death, they were brought to a place behind our barracks where the camp’s showers were. We saw them coming from afar and approach little by little, making numerous stops. They walked bent over and swaying. Those who no longer had enough strength to stay on their feet followed piled up on a cart that was dragged along by the stronger ones. The procession moved slowly in perfect silence. The Russian overseers and the German guards no longer shouted; by then it was useless. When they arrived at the shed with the showers, they gathered in front and stretched out lazily on the ground; the overseers made them get up in groups and led them inside, where, besides showering, their rags were disinfected. The Germans took these precautions to avoid possible epidemics caused by louse-ridden cadavers. Naturally, it did not matter that to arrive at this result it had been necessary to prevent the dying from breathing in peace in their own bunks. There was no point in protesting: the system was barbarous but scientific. The Russians stayed for hours lying outside the bath shed waiting their turn. Now and then the overseers came out and made another group get up. They rose slowly, helping one another, and entered the shed staggering. Some, on the other hand, did not get up. In this case the overseers shook them and sometimes they got up. Sometimes, however, they did not move. Then the overseers bent down, looked at them for a moment, and left them alone because they were dead. Their comrades showed no feelings. They accepted in silence, just as they accepted without comment or protest their ladleful of ration. When they left the showers and disinfecting, all, even the least sick, were completely without strength, and they walked holding one another up by turns. There were some who were no longer able to move their legs and whom the overseers dragged along bodily, holding them under the arms. Some died before reaching the cart that was to take them back to the barracks. But they were loaded all the same, heaped up helter-skelter with the dying. Then, as slowly as it came, the procession went away. Those who had died before going into the showers remained outside of the shed. Sometimes the overseers undressed them and buried the rags. We saw their naked corpses stretched out on the ground, thin as skeletons. Sometimes, on the other hand, they did not undress them. After a while a cart would arrive. The overseers lifted up the corpses, gripping them by the feet and armpits, swung them two or three times in the air, and threw them onto the cart. I well remember the sound of those lifeless bones striking against the bottom of the cart. When the load was finished, it was taken away. The cart moved off jerkily, with arms and legs hanging out over its sides and shaking from the bumps. Most of the time the bath functioned to wash and disinfect the dying. But often Russians were brought there who were still healthy. On one of these occasions the Germans let us know that there were some free places (the shower heads were numbered) and a few of us could make

use of them. Since I was covered with lice I went willingly, although I had a particular dislike for the showers because they weakened the body and awakened a terrible hunger. Cox was with me. At the entrance to the shed we noticed the well-known figure of Bigstick. “Keep away!” muttered Cox. Bigstick was sitting on a chair peacefully smoking his pipe. Nevertheless, we did not delay getting as far away from him as possible. We turned over our clothes for disinfection and took our showers. The Russians who were with us had been captured only a few months ago and did not yet show particular signs of privation. They were of the most varied ages, old men who appeared to be sixty and boys who looked sixteen. Two Germans were watching them, an old and a young one who gripped a thin wooden rod. Suddenly the latter began to study insistently, while smiling ironically, one of my comrades who had a big hooked nose. Then he asked him, “Bist du Jude?” “Nein! Nein!” exclaimed my comrade, making himself laugh a forced laugh, obsequious and trembling with fear. And he began to explain to the Germans how, in Italy too, the Jews were all kaput. His attitude was humiliating and disgusting. But this short conversation was suddenly interrupted because the German’s attention had been attracted by a young Russian, a boy, who was not in his place. The wooden rod swished in the air and came down on the boy’s shoulders, which were thin and delicate. He fell to the ground groaning with pain. “Komm! Komm! Komm!” bawled the German, making small, rapid signs with his forefinger for him to get up. The boy, still groaning, made an effort to get to his feet but slipped on the wet floor. The German let the stick fall for a second time on his shoulders. Finally the boy, trembling with pain and terror, got up and ran hack to his place. Meanwhile, the other guard was asking among some of us what regions we were from. He, too, had been in Italy, “In Genua,” he said. When he knew that I was Tuscan, he exclaimed, “Kianti! Prima!” and, raising his head, he lowered his lips to signify that Kianti enjoyed his entire approval. But then he gave us to understand that apart from Kianti there was nothing else noteworthy in Italy. The train station in Genoa was especially ugly. On the other hand, the station in Singapore was beautiful. At first I did not understand his enthusiasm for the station in Singapore. I understood afterward when he said, “Deutsche Arbeit,” and he lowered his lips. Now and then the Germans had us all go through the shower and disinfection. At those times the bathing shed was occupied only by us. But sometimes when the Russians were more numerous than usual and it was not possible to save us a turn, they took us to the bath at the other camp. The occurrence always aroused a certain emotion in us-in the first place because it gave us a way of going outside the rectangle of barbed wire and “getting a mouthful of air,” as Cox said; but especially because it gave us a chance to get inside the fabulous world that the other camp was for us, a world we had baptized “the gentlemen’s camp” or “the American camp.” It took more than a half-hour to walk through the heath to get there since our strength only

allowed us to move slowly. As soon as we were inside the camp, all of us became nervous and excited; we turned our heads left and right, looking intently to try and see the Americans. Sometimes we saw them: impeccably clean-shaven, elegant in their uniforms without either holes or patches, their low shoes shined, walking back and forth like vacationers bored by a vacation they were not enjoying. “They’re not hungry,” we murmured under our breaths. The news also circulated in a whisper that they were so well supplied with food that they threw away the German ration, not even knowing what to do with the turnips. We looked at them admiringly, with an expression of reverent respect proper for demigods who were not hungry. When we passed near them we breathed deeply to enjoy as much as possible the smell of their cigarettes. What most astonished us was that they threw away their butts. Once one of them threw us some cigarettes, provoking a turmoil and uproar that can be easily imagined. When we left there we all had a fabulous vision of America, a country of marvels where the streets were paved with tins of meat and packages of Chesterfields. Cox, at the peak of enthusiasm, swore that America was the most beautiful country in the world. The showers and disinfecting ovens were operated by French prisoners with whom we entered into long conversations while waiting for our lice to bake. The French looked at our thin, naked bodies and exclaimed with affectionate irony, “On ne dirait pas qu ’on vous donne trop à manger!” Naturally this observation was greeted with warm approval on our side. Then they cursed “ces salauds de boches,” which was also approved just as warmly. Little by little an air of cordiality was established that gave me the feeling of being among older brothers. They told us by turns of their treatment at the hands of the Germans. The French were infinitely better off than we were since they had the protection of the Red Cross; nevertheless, alongside the Americans, they, too, were poor wretches. “Ah, ceux là!” they said enviously, when the talk came round to the American prisoners. Then they said, sighing, “nous sommes européens, nos!” Then we told them what we had seen of the Russian prisoners. They decided that in the world of the Kriegsgefangenen the Americans came first, then at a great distance the English, then at a great distance the French, the Italians, then the Russians. And we all shook hands feeling practically like comrades. When we returned to our camp, we were worn out with hunger and weakness. But these conversations with the French always made me happy. Giampiero Carocci, The Officers Camp, trans. George Hochfield (Evanston, Ill.: Malboro, 1997), 93-100.

43 Anti-Fascist Anthems The anti-fascists also had their anthem during the armed Resistance. One of the most popular, “Fischia il vento,” was written in 2944 by F. Cascione and sung to the Russian folk song “Katyusha.” Another, “Bella ciao,” was clear about the possibility of dying in the mountains. Original words and music can be found at the website of the Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d’Italia (ANPI):www.anpi.it/canzoniere/. Fischia il vento The wind blows, the storm howls Broken shoes and yet we must go to conquer the red springtime Where the sun of the future shines. Every region is the patria of the partisan, Every woman longs for him The stars guide him in the night, strong is his heart and his arm as he strikes. If cruel fate seizes him the partisan will have his vengeance; a harsh fate is now certain for the vile one whom we seek. The wind ceases, the storm calms The proud partisan returns home waving the red flag at last we are victorious and free. Bella ciao

This morning I awoke oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao, this morning I awoke and found the invader. O partisan, take me away oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao, o partisan take me away, for I feel as though I am dying. And if I die up there on the mountain,. oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao, and if I die up there on the mountain you must bury me. Bury me on the mountain, oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao, bury me on the mountain under the shadow of a beautiful flower. And the people who will pass, oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao, and the people who will pass will say to me: “What a beautiful flower.” This is the flower of the partisan, oh bella ciao, hella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao, this is the flower of the partisan who died for freedom.

Translations by Stanislao G. Pugliese.

44 Threats Are Good for You Guglielmo Petroni Guglielmo Petroni (1911-1993) was born in Lucca and became a poet and journalist in Florence. In 1943, he joined the Resistance but was arrested on 3 May 1944. For the next thirty-three days, he was interrogated and tortured by the Gestapo in various prisons in Rome. His memoir of those days, The World Is a Prison, has been almost continuously in print since it, first appeared in 1948. In it, he not only chronicles .his experiences but meditates on the nature of a precarious existence in which paradox and absurdity abound. Every morning around eight the phones on the various floors started ringing, and each ring was a summons for an interrogation. When you went downstairs to be interrogated, you never knew in what state you’d come back—sometimes not on your own legs, but dragged by the head and feet by two soldiers and flung inside the cell like a sack, perhaps followed by a pail of icecold water if your wounds were such as to mess the floor with blood. We each awaited our turn, but it generally came when you didn’t expect it. That was how it happened to me. I was called while I was getting ready to go to the toilet: I was bare-chested, and just had time to put on my jacket with no shirt and go down the stairs under the watchful eyes of the sentries on the landings, who often gave you a violent shove to make you hurry. For three days I was interrogated almost without interruption, except for the meal hour— three exhausting days that oddly enough gave me a kind of strength I seemed to have lost completely inside the cell. I felt wide awake, with a calm I was unable to account for, and even ready to react in a veiled and coolly polite fashion, whereby I noted, not without satisfaction, a certain disorientation on the part of my inquisitors. They grilled me unmercifully and tried all their tricks. Now they were courteous, even affable; now they called in a maniac whose chest

was covered with medals and crosses; they put me face down on a desk and flogged me, laughing as though it were a game. The one asking me questions wanted to be called Lieutenant Fritz. He was an elegant youth, perhaps an Italian, and translated everything I said for the German officer, who hour after hour never stopped staring at me, as though he might read something in my eyes. From the first moment I began to realize that they meant to treat me in a special fashion, between cool and sometimes strangely deferential politeness, and the anger and death threats that exploded furiously when I least expected it. If I had had to go through it earlier, I wouldn’t have known what to think, I would have been unable to foresee my attitude; but I soon realized that the calmer I felt, the more terrible and peremptory the threats became. The more they threatened me with death, and especially when they brandished the hullwhip in my face, the more sure I came to feel that under no circumstances would I betray the friends whose names they wanted. As soon as I entered the room, they sat me down in a corner next to a table on which five or six rawhide whips were lined up, some with wooden handles, others with elegant chromeplated and engraved handles. As I sat down, the German officer did not look at me, but kept his eyes on these devices with the obvious intention of making me look at them too, and indeed I did turn and pretend to take an interest in them, while feeling at the same time, instinctively more than by any clear wish, that I was making an effort to assume a candid, serene, almost smiling expression. I who in the simplest situations of life am often timid, and very often clumsy, felt strangely secure and self-possessed. Except, deep within me, I had the terrible sensation that seems to become more acute in such circumstances than when one is alone in the darkness of the prison; I felt a sense of infinite solitude, the impression that the whole world had forgotten me, something that even today it occurs to me must be similar to what a shipwrecked person feels when alone and lost in the middle of the ocean. But this feeling was submerged, it lay hidden at the bottom of the soul; on the level of my nerves, never had I felt so alive and secure in an unwavering mood, whatever might happen. I won’t bother to recount the three days of interrogation, which anyway would resemble many that have been described by others. Compared with some I’ve heard of, I can today consider them three bland days, despite the alternating courtesies and beatings. Now it was a few lashes with the whip given like a ritual in the middle of the room, while I was held face down on the last day, before the final lashes on the soles of the feet, a cup of wine offered with the most pleasant of smiles. The last time, after the courteous cup of wine, the German officer told them to inform me that in a few days I might be shot. I had been told this perhaps a hundred times, but this time, spoken with a courteous voice and in a tone of farewell, after I had signed my deposition, it made me think that it could really turn out that way. Today perhaps it astonishes me, but at that moment, and in all the days that followed, I entertained the idea with an indifference that caused me to analyze myself many times in the course of the day, trying to understand why it didn’t make me suffer.

I was never able, however, to explain it, but I smiled to myself and concluded: “Good for you, Billy boy, I’m proud of you.” Guglielmo Petroni, The World Is a Prison,, trans. John Shepley (Evanston, III: Malboro, 1999), 74-76. See also Charles Klopp, Sentences The Memoirs and Letters of Italian Political Prisoners from Benvenuto Cellini to Aldo Moro (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), and Ellen Nerenberg, Prison Terms: Representing Confinement during and after Italian Fascism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001).

45 The Four Days of Naples Renato Luigi Sansone By September 1943, conditions in the southern city of Naples bad deteriorated considerably. Air raids had reduced many neighborhoods of the city to rubble; “see Naples and die!” had taken on an all-too-literal significance. A food shortage soon degenerated into a smallscale famine. Disease and hunger stalked the streets. Yet the citizens of the city were soon to witness an extraordinary event: the so-called Four Days of Naples. Led by the notorious but ever-resourceful scugnizzi, the people of Naples rebelled against the Nazi occupation and in four days managed to expel the Germans from the city. The victory came at a high price: men, women, and children killed by warfare and executed by the wounded Nazi animal. For four days (28 September-1 October 1943), the people of Naples fought against vastly superior forces. Using the most modest of arms, including improvised barricades, Molotov cocktails, hunting shotguns, and vintage rifles often left over from World War I, they managed to convince the Germans of the futility of remaining in Naples. Renato Luigi Sansone was an anti fascist and a member of the Comitato Nupoletano di Liberazione. Here he describes the vital role played by the women of Naples. I had just gone out onto Via Constantinople when a woman started to shout: “Run! At Piazza Dante they are rounding up the men!” I now clearly understood why the SS were lined all up and down Via Constantinople. But I had to cross the neighborhood of the Museum. How could I escape the roundup? I remembered the building with a double exit that opened onto Via San Potito (the so-called Scale a San Potito) and that the Germans certainly could not know about. And so, having crossed Via Broggia and Via Pessina, I climbed the stairs to what was for me then the magical front door of the Church of San Giuseppe dei Nudi. The street was silent and populated only with some women at the doors of their bassi. In the middle of the road, one of these women said to me: “Signorino, where are you going? In Via Salvator Rosa they are rounding up the men,” and saying this she pulled me into her small but

clean home. Hiding myself behind a big, old armoire, I realized that under the big bed with the old iron headrest there were two young men and another in the armoire. The woman nonchalantly went outside and I had the feeling that she was mounting guard over us. How much time passed? I can’t say. Perhaps a hour. What was certain was that from the road that goes to Via Salvator Rosa, we heard a woman cry out: “They can come out; these fetenti have left.” So from the various bassi of the street about fifty of us—men of all ages—ran through the alleys and everyone, each in his own way, and tried to reach home. I have not been able to track down exactly the basso and the woman who saved me from the roundup. Two or three times I have returned to San Giuseppe dei Nudi, but I have not been able to precisely identify my refuge. To the unknown woman who, without thinking of the risk to herself, drew me with spontaneous maternal action into her house, to all the women of Naples who acted with heroism worthy of the greatest Italian and Neapolitan tradition, I send my sense of gratitude and admiration. www.idn.it/orgoglio/storia/giornate_x.htm; trans. Stanislao G. Pugliese. See also Aubrey Menen, The Four Days of Naples (New York: Seaview, 1979).

46 Civil War Claudio Pavone Claudio Pavone mas born in Rome in 1920 and fought in the Resistance. For many years, he was both a professor of history at the University of Pisa and a functionary of the Archivio dello Stato. In 1991, he first published a controversial work in which he argued that the period 1943-1945 should be interpreted as one in which, three wars were being fought simultaneously: a patriotic war, a class war, and a civil war. This was contrary to the usual interpretation on the left of the “war of liberation. ” Here, in the original foreword, Pavone explains how and why he came to use such an interpretive framework. (Note that in Italian, the word moralita might be understood better as the English. “ethics” rather than “morality. ”) Many years ago, Ferruccio Parri proposed to me that I write a book using, as a model, two works that sometime before had been published in France: Les cozerants de pensee de la Resistance by Henri Michel and, by the same Michel and Boris Mikine-Guetzevitch, Les idées politiques et socials de la Résistance. When I began my research I was, at first and above all, attracted to the institutional theme, though it was indeed through the drafting of the essay on La continuità dello Stato when I became convinced of the difficulty, in an essay on Italian Resistance, of separating political, social, and institutional ideas and programs. Above all, many of the ideas that circulated during the Resistance were developed before, or, if developed at that time, were later on and to a great deal elaborated and organized in a climate of rapid political change. This not only made the identification of the sources difficult, but also indicated the necessity of analyzing the behavior of the protagonists to understand the ideas that inspired them, even if those ideas were formulated without clarity or coherence. Thus, the objective of my research shifted from programs to the protagonists—to their moral

convictions, to the cultural structures within them, to emotive preferences, and to the doubts and passions elicited by that brief and intense sequence of events. On what grounds did people base their actions, when institutions—the frame of which they had been accustomed to operate with—vacillated or vanished, to then reassemble themselves and demand new and different loyalties? To this question, years of terrorism added yet another question, illustrated with particular dramatic force: if, how, and why is violence justified when it must be carried out without a clear, institutional legitimacy? In other words: when the State is no longer capable of exercising its monopoly of violence with any certainty? The question appeared particularly difficult to those who refused an answer that denied politics and history. And it was in fact at that moment, during a series of seminars on the relationship between politics and morality initiated by Norberto Bobbio at the Centro Gobetti of Turin, that the presentation I made constituted the first nucleus of this book. The word that seemed to me to best summarize what appeared to become the object of my research was “moralità.” Not “moral,” a term that, on the one hand was confined to the individual conscience, while on the other risked sliding into the rhetoric of the Resistance. Not “mentalità,” a word that in a short time has acquired multiple meanings and generated controversies which I did not intend to get caught in. When my book was already finished, I found confirmation of my choices in a letter from Giorgio Agosti to Dante Livio Bianco in their recently published correspondence: “Your correspondence has the interests and the character of an eighteenth-century epistolary exchange—full, as it is, of ‘moralità’ and of perspicacious ‘notations.’” Moralità is a word particularly suited to define the territory on which politics and ethics meet and clash, relying on history as a possible common measure. It was necessary, whenever possible, to immerse oneself in the historical context when dealing with matters that first appeared to be political but which were in reality great moral problems and, reciprocally, to show how these same historical events necessarily influenced those problems. The “high” [political] sources—the most noted and studied-have thus ceded much of the field to “low” [popular] sources. In fact, I propose not to reconstruct once again the history of leading organizations—parties such as CLN, CVL, etc.—but to see how the general directives were received and acted upon at various levels by adapting to a vast array of individual and collective experiences, that just through these adaptations, and even upheavals, left a trace of themselves. That which the political approach and military strategy in this subtle diffusion lost in coherence, it gained in adherence to reality; and this, if not always pleasing to politicians, today it is surely so for historians. Is it possible, in only so many pages and with only so many examples, to give everyone a say? There are partisans who have never spoken, nor will they ever speak; they have not escaped from the situation as expressed by a concentration camp survivor: “It is sad to live without letting others know.” I would be very happy if they could recognize themselves, even slightly, in that which I have written here. It goes without saying that this book could not have been written if the ground had not been broken by others, starting from the pioneering Storia della Resistenza by Roberto Battaglia

(the first edition published in 1953), to the vast research promoted by the Istituto nazionale per la storia del movimento di liberazione in Italia and the network of institutes associated with it. Only these works allowed me to accept certain assessments of facts and analysis of ideologies. The book presumes a distinction between a Resistance in a real and proper sense, the one fought politically and militarily in the North by a conspicuous minority and a Resistance in the broader and more literal sense, that assumed with time—even for those who had not participated or tried to avoid, manipulate or marginalize its memory—the role of legitimizing the entire political system of the Italian Republic and its ruling class (the “constitutional arch,” heir of the CLN). The book deals with the Resistance in the former sense, but must necessarily emphasize, side by side with the differences, also its connection with the Resistance in the latter, broader, sense. The three central chapters could be grouped under the title “The Three Wars: Patriotic, Civil and Class.” I first used this formula in a work presented at a conference held in Belluno in October of 1988. In the work, civil war emerges from the other two. It, in fact, offers a key reading in a general sense (and above all, denies fascist or pro-fascist apologists with provocative intentions the possibility of manipulating the fact). This interpretation of civil war in the book prevented that certain separate parts be dedicated to fascists: fascists, as opponents, are present everywhere in this volume. A last observation: great and exceptional events render problematic that which usually appears obvious and promotes simultaneously the drive towards clear-cut choices and judgements and the love of ambiguity that only allow us to comprehend others when they resonate in us. Those who in their youth were involved in these great events has difficulty transmitting all of this wealth to newer generations, and, if one tries to do it with historical research, a silent process, mustered over so many years of memory, insinuates itself in the selection of sources. In this sense, my research has also been of an autobiographical nature. Claudio Pavone, Una Guerra civile: Saggio sulla moralità nella Resistenza (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1994), xvii-xx; trans. Francesca Vassalle.

VIII THE DEATH THROES OF FASCISM

47 A Nation Collapses Elena Agarossi In 1996, the Italian historian Ernesto Galli Della Loggia wrote a book titled La Morte della patria in which he equated the collapse of fascism (July 1943) and the Armistice with the Allies (September 1943) with the “Death of the Fatherland. ” Most historians and citizens agree that the events of July-September 1943 engendered a crisis of identity and national consciousness, but the larger and long-term ramifications have been the subject of widely different interpretations. Here Elena Agarossi lays out the issues in the conclusion of her book originally published in 1995. The meaning of the tragedy of September 8 and the interpretation of the origins of the Resistance are issues that still divide historians as they divided Italians at the time. The internal conflict that characterized the postwar years in Italy prevented an objective reconstruction of the events of 1943. Up to now there has been no history of Italy for that period that is acceptable to all sides; there are only partial reconstructions, separate accounts with no common base: the story of the defeated and that of the victors. Most studies present an artificial contrast between two Italys, the Fascist one that died between July 25 and September 8 and the new one born on September 9 with the Committee of National Liberation and the Resistance. It is taken for granted that on September 8 and the days following, the army dissolved, and with it the previous state. The condemnation of the army, which disbanded ignominiously, is common to both the Fascists, who, like the Germans, looked on the armistice as a betrayal, and the anti-Fascists. According to Ugo La Malfa, then a leader of the Action Party, “Badoglio’s great army existed and died in Italy on September 8.” Condemnation of the senior military and the government has been followed by condemnation of the army and the military in general: “There will never again he an army in Italy,” Fenoglio has a soldier say in one of his stories, expressing the sense of emptiness and collapse he saw around him on Septemher 8. This condemnation was issued by the emerging anti-Fascist ruling class, which considered

September 8 and the fate of the army to be the final act of the preceding regime, while exalting the birth of the Resistance as the expression of a new Italy. Most historical studies follow this line of interpretation without ever verifying it. In recent works, however, it has gradually been revised, in order to understand and explain with greater subtlety an extremely complex situation. In Claudio Pavone’s book Una guerra civile, the choice in the days following the armistice between loyalty to the monarchy and loyalty to Mussolini is for the first time considered a legitimate “moral” one. Pavone, an intellectual of the Left, uses the concept of “civil war” to explain the struggle between partisans and exponents of the Italian Social Republic, thereby avoiding the usual condemnation of the followers of Mussolini voiced by historians of the Resistance. The Italian republic emerging from the 1946 referendum was founded on the myths that the Resistance was a popular struggle and that the population adhered to the values of antiFascism. To support these myths it was necessary to deny the fact that the majority of the population had accepted the Fascist regime, thus upholding a false interpretation and preventing the country from coming to terms with its Fascist past. In opposition to this historical version, recent studies stress the country’s passivity when faced with the events of September 8 and the German occupation. Beyond the errors and faults of the ruling class and the military commanders, these observers see September 8 as the outcome of a deeper moral crisis in which Italy is still involved today. It is certainly true that no Italian historian has felt the need to make an “examination of conscience” concerning the crisis of September 8 as Marc Bloch did in explaining the “strange defeat” of France in June 1940. However, historians like Bloch are rare not only in Italy but in France as well. After Bloch’s death, for decades no other French historian engaged in a similar examination of conscience concerning the Vichy regime, as serious a phenomenon as September 8 for Italy. Only in recent years has the problem of Vichy France been presented as an issue that touches on the very morality of the nation. The risk inherent in interpreting September 8 as “the autobiography of a nation” and a sign of a moral crisis of long duration, however, is that by pushing the origins of the crisis back in time, it hecomes an alibi for the complete irresponsibility of the ruling class, thereby divesting the events associated with the Italian surrender of any concrete historical meaning. September 8, in the collective memory and in the two opposing interpretations we have described, is regarded as that moment when the army dissolved and everyone decided to go home, the moment the Italian army was humiliated by surrendering its weapons to the Germans. It is a stigma that seems impossible to remove, an indelible sign of the Italian character. However, historians have never examined the actual behavior of the army, some viewing it as merely an instrument of the preceding regime, others as a reflection of the national crisis. The reality is far more complex. The two Italys, that of September 8 and that of the Resistance, are much closer than has been apparent up to now. Many soldiers fleeing from their barracks could not reach their homes, and went into the mountains to join that minority of antiFascists who freely chose to fight the Germans. Moreover, many officers fought in partisan

political formations. While in those days their significant role in the Resistance was recognized, their lack of political motivation earned them a negative judgment in later historical studies. The unilateral interpretation of the Resistance as a revolutionary movement, given by the parties of the Left that took part in it, excluded all those who at the time of the armistice and over the next two years fought the Germans exclusively to defend the nation and uphold its honor. The “autonomous,” namely nonpolitical, partisan formations were pejoratively labeled “badogliani” by those “resisters” whose motivation was political. When possible they were isolated, and in some areas there were also armed clashes. The Resistance, however, was a repository for many different ideals and goals that defy any schematic or Manichaean interpretation. The need to restore the nation’s dignity, betrayed by Fascism and the Badoglio government, was indeed one of its dominant themes. The use of the term “patria”—fatherland—which did not then have the old-fashioned and almost pejorative tone that it later took on, was widespread among the partisans. In historical studies, the patriotic element has been relegated to second place, while the concepts of the Resistance as a “civil” and a “class” war have prevailed—to borrow Claudio Pavone’s most useful classification. Pavone’s text is a good example of the contradictions that can be found in many histories of that period. It represents a turning point, since it introduces reflections on the patriotic theme, but at the same time it does not in the least free itself from old assumptions, dedicating to the patriotic war much less space than that devoted to the “civil” and “class” aspects of the conflict. The idea of the Italian nation neither was destroyed by the trauma of September 8, nor ceased to represent an important reference point for both public life and personal identities during the Resistance. The fact that historical studies for so long ignored this aspect has more to say about the period in which they were written than about the period they were dealing with. It was after the establishment of post-Fascist democracy that the Italian national identity began to weaken; this was also a result of the political hegemony then achieved by the parties of the Left and the Catholic party, which received their legitimacy from supranational entities such as the USSR on the one side and the Vatican on the other. Furthermore, those parties had historically been forces of opposition to the Italian state, and did not share the ideals of the Risorgimento on which the nation had been built. When the need to mobilize public opinion in the immediate aftermath of the war had passed, the forces both of opposition and of government set aside the “national” element, which they had never really espoused. The antiFascist political parties that had fought in the Resistance became the building blocks of the new Italian republic; they gave it legitimacy and provided the Italians with means of expressing their political identity. The weakening of the idea of the nation, however, meant that a common ideological principle in which all Italians could recognize themselves was lacking. Partisan identities prevailed over and erased an Italian identity. Only in recent times has the emergence of the Northern League, a political force that sometimes advocates the dissolution of national unity, resulted both in a renewed interest in the origins of the process of denationalization and in an attempt to return to the certainties of yesterday. Perhaps the moment has come to rethink these issues in search of a unifying idea of the

Italian past and to reconsider the establishment of the Italian republic beyond myths that are no longer valid. Such an effort must begin with the gulf brought on by September 8. The refusal of the post-Fascist political class and historians to settle accounts with historical events has artificially divided the nation into the old Italy of the collapse of the army and the new one of the anti-Fascist response. However, they are interconnected and the point where they intersect is represented by the chaotic period that followed the armistice. Elena Agarossi, A Nations Collapses: The Italians Surrender of September 1943, trans. Harvey Fergusson II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 134-38. Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press.

48 Manifesto of Verona After Mussolini’s rescue by Nazi paratrooper, Hitler convinced him to return to Italy and form the Repubblica Sociale Italiana (RSI-Itulian Social Republic). From September 1943 until April 1945, Mussolini attempted to preserve a facade of sovereignty, but in reality the RSI was under the firm control of the Germans. Known popularly as the Saiò Republic after Mussolini’s residence located on the shores of Lake Garda, it has been a point of controversy in the postwar period. Conservatives and neofascists argue that Mussolini and those who joined the RSI were petforming a patriotic duty, others see the RSI as the lastgasp of a brutal regime. Indeed, one of the RSI’s major duties was the repression and execution of Italian partisans. The RSI also tried and executed those fascists who had voted for the dictator’s dismissal on 25 July 1943. Mussolini’s own foreign minister and son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano, was executed notwithstanding the pleas of his daughter, Edda Mussolini Ciano. On 14 November 1943, the first congress of the Fascist Republican Party was held in Verona. The following manifesto was issued—a confusing mix of fascism’s early radicalism and an attempt to placate the Nazis.

MANIFESTO OF VERONA 1. A Constituent Assembly must be convened. As the sovereign power of popular origin, it shall declare an end to the Monarchy, solemnly condemn the traitorous and fugitive King, proclaim the Social Republic and appoint its Head. 2. The Constituent Assembly shall be composed of representatives of all the syndical associations and all the administrative areas, including the representatives of the occupied provinces by means of delegations from those evacuees and refugees who are in liberated territory. It shall likewise include representatives of the combatants and the prisoners of war by means of repatriation of disabled personnel; representatives of Italians abroad; of the courts, of the universities, and of every other body or institution whose participation will contribute to making the Constituent Assembly a synthesis of all the worthy elements of the Nation. 3. The Republican Constituent Assembly must ensure to citizens, soldiers, workers and taxpayers the right to inspect and make responsible criticism of the actions of the various public administrations. Every five years citizens shall be called upon to vote on the appointment of the Head of the Republic.... In the exercise of their duties the courts shall act with complete freedom.

4. Both the negative electoral experience that Italy has already experienced and the partially negative experience of a method of nomination that proved too rigidly hierarchical make it necessary to find a solution that will reconcile opposing needs. A mixed system seems to be most advisable.... 5. There must be only one organization that shall have the task of the education of the people in political problems. The Party, an order of fighters and believers, has to become a true organism of absolute political purity, worthy to be the custodian of the revolutionary idea. Membership in the party will not be necessary for employment. 6. The religion of the Republic is the apostolic Roman Catholic. Every other cult that does not oppose the law is to be respected. 7. All those who belong to the Jewish race are foreigners. During this war they belong to an enemy nationality. 8. The main goal of the Republic’s foreign policy must be the unity, the independence, and the territorial integrity of the Patria within the coastal and alpine borders marked out by nature, by the sacrifice of blood, and by History; boundaries that are threatened by the enemy through invasion and by promises made by London to refugee governments. Another essential goal is to demand the recognition of vital space, essential to a people of 45 million, in an area insufficient to feed them.... 9. The base of the Social Republic and its primary object is manual, technical, intellectual labor in all its manifestations. 10. Private property, fruit of labor and individual savings and the integration of the human personality, shall be guaranteed by the State. 11. In the national economy, everything that functions beyond the private sphere or falls within the collective sphere, shall be embraced by the State. Public utilities and armaments industries must be managed by the State through government-controlled agencies. 12. In every enterprise (industrial, private, state or government) the representatives of the technicians and the workers must closely cooperate intimately (with the direct knowledge of management) to find equitable salaries, and the equitable division of profits.... 13. In agriculture, the private rights of the owner shall be limited where there is an absence of initiative. Uncultivated land and poorly managed farms may be expropriated and divided between laborers so as to transform them into private farmers or established as cooperative farms.... 14. The right of farmers, artisans, professionals, and artists to carry out productive work for their families shall be fully recognized, except for their obligation to deliver to collection depots those quantities of produce that are set forth by the law.... 15. Since housing is not only a right of property but a right to property, the Party is inscribing in its program the creation of a National Agency for People’s Housing.... 16. The fact that a worker is enrolled by the authorities in a labor syndicate will not prevent

his being transferred to another syndicate if he should have the requisite qualifications. The syndicates shall be combined into a single confederation ... called the General Confederation of Labor, Technology and the Arts. 17. Concerning one of the most pressing problems, the Party believes that there must be no delay in instituting a program of fair wages for the workers.... As for the black market, it is imperative that speculators, who are on the same moral level as traitors and defeatists, shall be brought within the jurisdiction of the extraordinary tribunals and are subject to the death penalty. 18. With this preamble to the work of the Constituent Assembly, the Party shows that not only is it moving toward the people, it is staying with the people. The Italian people have to realize that there is only one way for them to defend their achievements of yesterday, today, tomorrow: by throwing back the enslaving invasion of the Anglo-American plutocracies, who have demonstrated in a thousand precise ways that they intend to render even more difficult and miserable the lives of the Italians. There is only one way to attain all our social goals: fight, work, win. www.cronologia-it/storia/al943u.htm; trans. Stanislao G. Pugliese,.

49 A Letter before Dying Antonio Fossati As the mar dragged on between 1943 and 1945, fascist and Nazi reprisals became more severe. Thousand of partisans and civilians were detained, brutalized, tortured, and executed, including many who were not actively involved in the armed Resistance. The following is a letter found in the archives of the Corpo Volontari Ziberta in Milan and published in a collection of letters of those condemned to death. Covering a broad spectrum of Italian society, from aristocratic military officers to workers’ and peasants, these letters are an eloquent testimony to the sacrifices and ideals of those who fought for the principles of liberty and justice. My dearest Anna, Here I am with you, with my last letter written before leaving for my death. I die content in having fulfilled my duty as a True Patriot. My dear, be strong because I will pray for you from heaven, for you have always been the only consolation in these moments of great sorrow; I comforted myself only with thoughts of you. When you used to come, it seemed as though my life became more beautiful, I felt myself relieved. Do you remember, Anna, that day when you saw me crying? Great tears fell from the eyes of my dear little Anna as well and your hair dried the tears from my eyes. Dearest, I will now tell you something of my life: On the 27th I was taken to Vercelli where I was imprisoned without being interrogated. The morning of the 29th I was called before all the fascists of Vercelli. I never answered any of their questions; my only words were: “I know nothing and I am not a partisan.” They tried to make me talk but not a word left my mouth and I thought that I would die. On the 31st I was

tortured for the first time; they pulled out my eyelashes and eyebrows. On the 1st was the second round of torture: they pulled out my fingernails and toenails and left me in the sun; you can’t imagine the pain but I withstood it and not a lament left my mouth. On the 2nd they tortured me for the third time: they put flaming candles to nry feet and I found myself tied to a chair; my hair turned all gray but I didn’t talk and it passed. On the 4th I was taken to a room where there was a table where I was tied by a rope by the neck and for ten minutes an electric shock passed through me; this went on for three days until the 6th when at 5 in the afternoon they said I was finished but I had not yet answered; I wanted to know what my fate was to be so I could write to my dear Anna and they told me of that terrible condemnation: death. I made them see that I was very proud. But when I was brought back to the cell I fell on my knees and wept; I had your photo in my hands but your face was unrecognizable because of the many kisses and tears I gave you. This you must forgive me dear Anna, be strong and accept this horrible crime and have courage: your love will be shot in the back. But the Lord will have His vengeance. Time passes and Death will come. Dear Anna you must promise me one thing only: that you will know how to vindicate the blood of an innocent who cries for vengeance against the fascists. In your heart there must be no sorrow but only the pride of a Patriot. I pray that you keep my tricolor ribbon as a reminder and that you carry it always by your heart. Anna do not cry for me; you who have lost your dear father to death. I will watch over you from heaven wherever you go and I will follow you everywhere. I find myself in the hands of executioners. If you saw me Anna, you would not recognize me anymore because of the state I’m in: very thin, gray, I look like your grandfather; yet that is not all: the worst will come tomorrow night, without any succor from you or from my parents, without seeing any loved ones; what a sorrow it will be for my mother. Anna, I beg you that at war’s end, go to Torino and find my sister; tell her what happened during the time of my imprisonment.... Anna be strong, take up this heavy cross until you reach heaven. Now I really must end because my hands are in great pain and are bleeding. Farewell and kisses; pray for me who from heaven will pray for you. Antonio Fossati Lettere cli conclannati a morte delta Resistenza italiana: 8 settembre 1943-25 aprile 1945, ed. by Piero Malvezzi and Giovanni Pirelli (Turin: Einaudi, 1994), 3-4; trans. Stanislao G. Pugliese.

50 Graffiti from a Nazi Prison Arrigo Paladini The former SS and Gestapo headquarters in Rome is today an eerily quiet place. The silence is broken only when schoolchildren visit. Tucked away on Via Tasso in a middle-class district in the Eternal City—a stone’s throw from the Basilica of St. John in Lateran—the former prison is now the Museo Storico della Liberazione di Roma, commemorating the liberation of Rome by Resistance fighters and Allied troops in June 1944. Outside, children play in the street under the stern gaze of sober Roman matrons. Neighbors greet each other and go about their business in the shadow of an anonymous building. One can hardly imagine a setting less appropriate for war crimes and inhumane acts. Yet slowly the voices begin to penetrate the walls; or rather, the voices emerge from the walls, because here, in minuscule, windowless rooms, partisans were interned between “interrogations. ” While awaiting the next round of torture and ultimately—almost inevitably—execution, they managed to scratch or scrawl with a pencil or a furtively hidden nail, graffiti, random thoughts, fragments of poems, testimonies, aphorisms, and poignant pleas. The graffiti are full of pathos and the romantic idealism that so permeated the Italian Resistance. Instilled with a classical education, and sometimes writing in Latin or Greek, the prisoners often refer to Dante, the Bible, the Stoics, and other writers of antiquity. A visitor today can still read the desperate inscriptions. Lieutenant Arrigo Paladini condemned to death arrested May 4, 1944 11:40 a.m. 3:00 p.m.-11:00 p.m. beatings

Graffiti of Arrigo Paladini from the Gestapo prison on Via Tasso in Rome. (Courtesy of Liana Miuccio, Rome and New York.) Arrigo Paladini sentenced to death for having served Italy Love Italy more than yourself, more than the world of your affections, more than your own life and those dear to you, without any limitations, with an unshakable faith in your destiny—only in this way can you die for Her serenely and without regrets like the martyrs who proceeded you. A.P. I believe in God and Italy I believe in the resurrection

of martyrs and heroes I believe in the rebirth of the country and in the liberty of the people A.P. there is nothing that can give the joy of a beautiful death as the consciousness of having served the country until the last breath of life time is the healer of all evils there is no greater sorrow than to remember happy times in misery ... [Dante, Inferno canto V] meditate man upon your nothingness in the face of the grandeur of the universe When your body is no longer, your spirit will be even more alive in the memory of those who remain. Act so that it will always be an example. it is better to die heroically at twenty than of old age at one hundred The last hope is not lost—perhaps life is saved have faith 3-June-44 Arrigo Paladini [rescued the next day] Death is ugly

for he who fears it I resisted [torture] but it was terrible! [Last Testament] I leave this life just when the future is most bright, on the eve of the most beautiful day. I have no regrets, only the certainty of having fulfilled my duty as a soldier to the end, according to the imperative of my conscience; the awareness of having offered everything to that ideal that has always constituted for me the only rule of life; the firm conviction of leaving behind a trace of pure honesty and proper conduct; so that today I can face death with the greatest of serenity and the highest spirit. In this hour, I cannot fail to feel the privilege that has been granted me: to give all of myself, until the last vital energy of life, to the supreme cause of the Fatherland. I could long meditate on the transiency of life and the pettiness of human things before leaving them forever. To God, who from heaven sees and judges all the miseries of my soul, who knows how to understand and forgive them, my most profound thanks for the serene steadfastness that sustains me. To my father, who guides me from above, the certainty that never—in no case—has your son deflected from that line that with your example and sacrifice you wished to indicate. To my mother, who I know I leave in pain and desolation, to maintain the faith in my dignity as a man and as a soldier, I ask forgiveness, leaving her the supreme pride of having given the Fatherland the greatest gift. To Riretta, whom I infinitely love, the custodianship of my memory and my spirit with the precise task of keeping alive forever my idea; that you forgive me if I disdained happiness. I ask forgiveness from all those to whom I involuntarily did wrong: for my part, I have no rancor towards anyone. Long live Italy Arrigo Paladini Rome May 1944 From Stanislao G. Pugliese, Desperate Inscriptions: Graffiti from the Nazi Prison in Rome (Boca Raton, Fla.: Bordighera, 2002).

51 Final Examination Bruce Cutler The actions of the fascist regime and the anti-fascist Resistance continue to inspire the work of historians, filmmakers, visual artists, writers, and poets. Bruce Cutler, poet, writer, and, founding director of the creative writing program at Wichita (Kansas) State University, was profoundly moved by the experience of the city of Naples during World War II. This piece concerns an event from the mythical “Four Days of Naples. ” He’s lucky. He’s a young partisan who has been captured, not by the German SS, who have just arrived at the outskirts of Naples, but by the Fascist police. He undergoes the usual beatings. The police commissioner holds an adjunct professorship in the university law school, and after a few hours, hearing that the young partisan is a university student, he steps in and personally takes over the interrogation. After three days of questioning, the young partisan still remains silent, so the police commissioner makes him an offer. He tells him that this will be his “final examination.” To complete it, he must choose between two alternatives. One: if he betrays the hiding places of his comrades, he will be sentenced to death. But the sentence will not be carried out; he will live, and eventually have his freedom. If the young partisan chooses this alternative, the police commissioner promises to plant false documents in the files proving that the information came from other sources. In this way, his reputation will remain untarnished, and in an anti-fascist victory, he will be in line for all the honors due a hero of the resistance. On the other hand, if the young partisan refuses to give him the information about his comrades, the police commissioner tells him he is confident that in a few days, as a result of

the terror caused by the arrival of the German SS, all his comrades will be rounded up. After which, they will be shot. Then the commissioner will plant “proof” that it was information from him which had betrayed his comrades and thereafter everyone will look upon him as a traitor and spit on his grave. It is for him to choose. Which will it be? The young partisan asks for a day to consider, and goes back to his cell. Sixteen hours later, he hangs himself. Bruce Cutler, Seeing the Darkness (Kansas City: Mo.: BkMk, 1998), 13-14. Reprinted by permission of BkMk Press, University of Missouri, Kansas City.

52 A Nazi Massacre Robert Katz On 23 March 1944, as fascists were celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the fascist movement, a Gruppi di Azione Patriottica (GAP) unit carried out a successful attack against a German police battalion patrolling the streets of Rome. Thirty-three Germans were killed; in retaliation, Hitler ordered that ten Italians be executed for each German soldier killed. During the night of 23-24 March, the SS commander in Rome, Herbert Kappler, with the help of the chief of police, Pietro Caruso, compiled a list of 330 men and boys (another five were inadvertently added to the list in the confusion) ranging in age from fifteen to seventy-four. Among them were seventy-five Jews scheduled to be deported to Auschwitz. Many families lost more than one member to the massacre, including six members of the Di Consiglio family. The Ardeatine Caves are today a national landmark to the brutality of the Nazi occupation. Recently, a colleague of Kappler’s, Erich Priebke, who handled the list of those to be executed and who killed two men himself, was tried, acquitted, tried again, and placed under house arrest. The Priebke trial demonstrated that the Fosse Ardeatine massacre still resonates in Italian society, even as some tried to defend those responsible. Deep inside the Ardeatine caves, a German lighted a torch. A medic carried a flashlight in his hand. Captain Erich Priebke held a copy of Kappler’s list. Captain Schutz was ready. The executions were about to begin. Kappler again made a brief speech to his men, reminding them that their orders had come from the Fuehrer and that they, as officers in the Gestapo, had to set an example. “At that moment,” Kappler would recall, “I was very upset.”

The first platoon of five Germans then went to the mouth of the caves. In the clearing outside, the prisoners stood in the crisp air of the spring after-noon. Many of them had not been outdoors since last December. The sun lay almost level with the elevation into which the tunnels had been dug. It glistened on the grass above but left the entrance to the Ardeatine in cool shadow. Some of the men were singing.

Memorial to the victims of the Fosse Ardeatine massacre. (Courtesy of Liana Miuccio, Rome and New York.) The first platoon chose five of the waiting prisoners, each German selecting the man he would kill. They told the five Italians to come with them. Tied to one another, they were led to the rear of the center tunnel. Along the walls, soldiers held torches to light the way. At the second intersection the platoon and its victims turned left and halted. Captain Priebke demanded their names. Only last Saturday night, in the company of a beautiful Italian actress, Priebke had been at a gay party in Parioli, in an apartment in Via Ruggero Fauro. At the same party, by a strange set of coincidences, Priebke had met OSS undercover agent Peter Tompkins. The American had been introduced as a wealthy Fascist of a well-known family. Tompkins had just been informed of Lieutenant Giglio’s capture. He had been uneasy in the presence of the Gestapo officer, who

had stared at him suspiciously at various moments during the evening. Both men had been drinking heavily. The next day Tompkins wondered if he had in any way revealed his true identity. A confidant told the American, “When you get full of gin ... you might as well have a sign on your back: USA! Luckily our friend Erich wanted to make that girl so badly and was too busy grabbing at her breasts—I don’t think he noticed very much.” Now Erich Priebke scratched the first five names from his list. Soon he would cancel out Lieutenant Giglio. The five prisoners taken by the first platoon were forced to their knees and ordered to turn their heads to the wall. There was no resistance. The executioners took their place at the backs of their victims. A German soldier with a torch came up behind the men who would fire. The flickering light was poor. Major Domizlaff, who was in the first platoon, said later that “one scarcely saw the target against which one had to shoot.” Captain Schutz stood off to the side. He would give the command to fire. The five men waited for death. Among the first to die was Domenico Ricci, the thirty-oneyear-old clerk who only an hour ago had passed the broken peephole of Andrea De Gasperis’ cell. Ricci was the father of five children. In his pocket was a scrap of paper. In clear block letters Ricci, a Catholic, had written, “My dear God, we pray that You may protect the Jews from the barbarous persecutions. 1 Paternoster, 10 Ave Marias, 1 Gloria Patri.” “Ready!” Schutz cried. “Aim! Fire!” On a hill above the Ardeatine caves the hogkeeper Nicola D’Annabile, who had secretly been watching the activity in the clearing below him, heard the shots. He noted the time: 3:30 P.M. The German medic flashed his light on the fallen men. He pronounced them dead. Kappler decided that he would set his example in the second platoon. “I went to a nearby truck,” he later admitted, “and I took a victim with me, whose name was crossed out by Priebke from his copy of the list. Four other officers did the same. We led the victims to the same place and, in the same way, a little behind the first five, they were shot.” Ten men were dead. Kappler returned to his office. If he were to keep to the letter of the Fuehrer’s order, he was already seriously behind schedule. The executions had to be completed by 8 P.M.—twentyfour hours from the time the order had been issued from OBSW. His main preoccupation at the moment was Caruso. The Questore had not yet turned in his list, which had been due more than two hours ago. At Via Tasso, Kappler sent more of his men to take their turn in the execution squads. He then telephoned Caruso. The Questore said that he and Koch were still working on the list. The German demanded that the fifty prisoners on Caruso’s list be ready to leave Regina Coeli at once. He said they were to be turned over to one of his officers, Obersturmfuehrer (Lt.) Tunnat. There could be no delays.

Kappler then told Lieutenant Tunnat to go immediately to Regina Coeli. To increase the pressure on the Fascist officials, he ordered Tunnat not to wait beyond 4:30 P.M. He then called Commissar Alianello of the Public Security office and dispatched him to Caruso to help speed up the process. He appointed Alianello, with whom he had often worked closely, to expedite the actual delivery of the prisoners into German hands. Alianello was to personally take Caruso’s list and rush it to the prison registry. During this flurry of office work, Kappler received a telephone call from a Gestapo officer at the Ardeatine caves. One of his junior officers, Kappler was told, was refusing to shoot. Kappler said not to take any action against the man. He himself would return to the caves and handle the matter. Inside the tunnels the insubordinate first lieutenant was taken aside and the executions continued. The officers were ordered to participate a second time. Discipline was becoming sloppy. Some platoons were killing the Italians one by one. Some victims resisted. They had to be beaten down with gun butts. One man, a twenty-six-year-old seaman named Antonio Pisino, did not have to be shot. He was killed by a blow from a blunt object that smashed his skull. Bodies were strewn about without order. By now they formed a ghastly mosaic about seventy-five feet long. It was clear that unless they were stacked, the patchwork of dead men would soon extend out to the open road. But piling the corpses would be too laborious a task and would take too much time. When Kappler arrived at the caves, he spoke with the mutinous officer, SS Obersturmfuehrer Wetjen. He had been overheard to say of Kappler, “He gives the orders, but he doesn’t have to carry them out.” Kappler was kind. “I did not reproach him; I made him realize that his act would influence the discipline of the men.” He asked Wetjen why he had refused to shoot. The younger German replied that he felt “a revulsion.” Kappler explained all the reasons why he had to carry out his orders “like a good soldier.” “You’re right,” said Wetjen. “But it’s not that easy.” “Would you feel better if I were at your side when you fired?” Kappler asked. Wetjen agreed. “I put my arm around his waist,” Kappler remembered, “and we went together into the caves.” For the second time, Kappler took part in an execution platoon. Wetjen and his chief, standing side by side, each killed his man. To Kappler many of his men appeared downcast and beaten, and the majority of prisoners were yet to be executed. He had anticipated that this might happen. Ordering a temporary halt to the executions, he told his men to take a long break. “Everyone was spiritually depressed,” Kappler said later. He opened some Cognac he had brought with him from Via Tasso and the bottle was passed among the men “to restimulate them.” Kappler advised them to get drunk.

During this rest period, the men who had already been killed were piled on the backs of the first five. Robert Katz, Death in Rome (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 151-55. See also Alessandro Portelli, The Order Has Already Been Carried Out (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

IX HISTORY, MEMORY, AND THE WRITING OF THE PAST

53 Partisan Diary Ada Gobetti In the early days of fascism, Ada and Piero Gobetti were among the leading intellectual voices against the regime. Closely tied to their native city of Turin, they collaborated on such important journals as Energie nuove and La Rivoluzione liberale. After Piero’s death from a vicious beating by fascist squadristi, Ada supported herself and family by writing, teaching English, and translating English literature into Italian. As a partisan in the Piedmont region in northwest Italy, Ada Gobetti (1902-1968) was responsible for inspecting anti-fascist units in the countryside. Promoted to commander of a Justice and Liberty brigade, she set down her thoughts immediately after the war. Published for the first time in 1956, her Diario partigiano is recognized as one of the classics of Resistance literature. I dedicate these memoirs to my friends: close by and far away, those of twenty years and those of only an hour. Because friendship—a link of solidarity founded not on common blood nor homeland nor intellectual tradition, but on a simple human rapport of feeling oneself one with one among many—appears to me the intimate significance, the sign of our battle. And perhaps it truly was. And only if we succeed in saving it, in perfecting it, or in recreating it, above so many mistakes and so many tarnishes, will we succeed in understanding that this unity, this friendship was not and must not be only a means to achieving something else, but is a value in itself, because in it is perhaps the meaning of man—only then will we be able to rethink our past and see again the faces of our friends, alive and dead, without melancholy and without despair.... At the entrance to Via Garibaldi, which was completely deserted, a squadron of partisans blocked my passage. “You can’t go through. They are shooting,” they said. I showed them my badge, the card of the CLN [Committee of National Liberation], and they let me go. I continued

rapidly along the empty street, thinking that the cecchini [fascist secret police] were pure fantasy, when I heard a bullet whirr that proceeded to drive itself into the wall a few centimeters over my head. So the cecchini did exist, even if their aim wasn’t perfect. I continued along my way, internally accusing myself: mine was not courage, but stupidity; given the responsibilities that awaited me, I did not have the right to risk my life for reckless bravado. I swore to myself that I would never do it again. At home, after a short time, Paolo and Ettore also arrived. We ate something in a hurry and then I decided to go find Mario Andreis. I wanted to tell him what I had done and what I planned to do, and to feel that I was somehow supported and guided in the not easy task that awaited me. Ettore and Paolo decided to accompany me. I did not have my bicycle (they brought it to me later) and Ettore took me on the handlebar of his. We crossed the city, which was utterly quiet and deserted. Livio, who was shaving, was also at Mario’s house. But I realized right away that neither of them wanted to listen to me: they were tired and bewildered, each burdened with a thousand problems and a thousand worries. “Fine, fine,” Mario responded to everything I said. “You have done a very good job; whatever you have to do is fine.” And he was in a great hurry to send us away: “It is better that you do not go about late in the evening,” he said. We returned home in silence. We went to sleep in the beds that the incomparable Anna had laundered and made up again. But, regardless of how very tired I was, I was not able to sleep. I thought about everything that had happened in that very long day; but above all I thought about tomorrow. The shots that one could still hear in the distance from time to time reminded me that, notwithstanding the festive exaltation of that day, the war was not yet over; and I knew that big German forces were still not far from Turin, in Grugliasco in the Canavese [Valley]. But it was not this that worried me profoundly. The bloody struggle—even if there could still be terrible incidents—was virtually ended. The Reich, according to the prophetic inscription I read at the French Command in Plampinet, was truly en mines [in ruins]. Soon the Allies will have arrived. There would no longer be bombs, fires, round-ups, arrests, killings, hangings, and massacres. And this was a great thing. Nor did the practical and material difficulties that I had to confront in order to reconstruct a disorganized and devastated country frighten me, because the most unexpected and unheard of solutions for each thing would be found in the boundless resources of our people.... Yet confusedly I sensed that another battle was beginning: longer, more difficult, and more extensive, even if less bloody. Now it was no longer a question of fighting against arrogance, cruelty, and violence—easy to detect and to hate—but against interests that would try to rekindle themselves treacherously, against habits that would soon reaffirm themselves, against prejudices that would not want to die: all things that were much more vague, deceiving, and fleeting. And, moreover, it was a question of fighting among ourselves and within ourselves not only to destroy, but to clarify, affirm, and create; not to abandon ourselves to the comfortable exaltation of ideals we coveted for such a long time, not to be content with words and phrases,

but to renew ourselves, keeping ourselves “alive.” In short, it was a question of not letting that small flame of a unified and fraternal humanity that we saw be born on 10 September [19431 and that had guided and sustained us for twenty months be extinguished in the dead air of a normalcy that had only apparently been regained. I knew that even if the marvelous identity that had united almost all people in those days had fallen with the exaltation of victory, we would be there in numbers to fight this difficult battle: friends, companions of yesterday, would be those of tomorrow as well. But I also knew that the struggle would not be a single effort, it would not have its own single, immutable face like before; but it would be fractured into a thousand forms; and everyone would have to painstakingly, tormentedly, through diverse experiences, accomplishing different tasks, whether they be modest or important, pursue their own truth and their own life. All of this frightened me. And for a long time that night, which should have been one of relaxation and repose, I tormented myself, asking myself if I would know how to be worthy of this future, rich in difficulties and promises, that I was preparing myself to face with trembling humility. Ada Gobetti, Diario partigiano (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1956). Reprint, with an introduction by Goffredo Fofi, a preface by Italo Calvino, and a postscript by Bianca Guidetti Serra (Turin: Einaudi, 1996), 15, 412-14. Translated by Jomarie Alano.

54 The Resistance “Vulgate” Renzo De Felice Renzo De Felice (1929-1996) was considered one of the foremost historians of fascisrn. A professor of contemporary history at the University of Rome, he was also director of the journal Storia contemporanea and editor of the Journal of Contemporary History. His monumental seven-volume biography of Mussolini (the last volume published posthumously) forced a reconsideration of the Italian dictator. Based on extensive archival research, De Felice claimed it was time to examine Mussolini and fascism from an “objective” point of view, but he was criticized by some for “rehabilitating” the dictator. In Rosso e nero, De Felice addresses the controversy generated from his work: He argues here that the Resistance has generated its own mythology and has alienated many Italians from the state. More specifically, he writes that there exists a Resistance vulgate that censors any debate and forces historians, intellectuals, and citizens to accept a historiography based on myth. In the place of this mythologized historiography, De Felice argues for one that is based on a “scientific” methodology. Fifty years after its conclusion, the Resistance by now constitutes something far off, more than five decades might justify and not very well known in its substance. Uprooted from their natural context, the contours of the Resistance fall into vague morass. In this way, fascists, Germans and Allies remain—more often than not—counterparts without faces, which bring to mind the choirs of certain classical tragedies. The partisans, with their no better identifiable “masses” who were supposedly supporting them (but of which resistance historiography never really examines its real attitude and motivations) become the only protagonists. Despite the great deal of writing and speaking that has been done, the Resistance still has numerous blank or reticent pages; and above all else the pages of its history that are written are done more with

an ideological-political animus rather than historical spirit, and which are clearly dependent on the changes of political circumstances and strategies. Characteristic is the judgment on the Catholic presence [in the Resistance], at first completely minimized, then accused of little commitment and an anticommunist prejudice, but then finally over valued; everything adjusting precisely to the evolution of the relationship between the PCI [Italian Communist Party] and DC [Christian Democracy Party]. Therefore, the Resistance has come to assume in the eyes of most people, and especially of young people who are ignorant of its existential dimension, a sort of myth that arouses no other effect than boredom and indifference or the desire to hear other perspectives [sentire altre campane]. To this situation there were not lacking—especially in the 1960s—attempts to react by extending and deepening the research to at least some of the “shadowy zones” that the official Resistance historiography had not yet until then taken into consideration or which it had not thought opportune to confront; partially not to upset the harmony of the picture that had been delineated and accredited in a quarter century at all levels, partially because it was the prisoner of the vulgate to which it had given life. The results have been rather poor, both because at the beginning of such attempts, the reasons were political-ideological rather than scientific in nature, the fruit of the internal oppositions to the Left that derived from 1968, and also because the theme of the Resistance remained a prerogative of researchers and publicists, competent enough, but who continued to conceive of the study [of the Resistance] in a political context and continued to face it without departing from the traditional paradigms. We have arrived at the idea of a “turn” [“svolta”] only as a consequence of the fall of the [Berlin] wall and the collapse of the Soviet regime. Then, many ideological certainties crumbled and the Russian archives began to make available to researchers documents that had been precluded to that moment and that, even if indirectly, also left a heavy mark on the Resistance vulgate.... The celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the War of liberation and the few, more properly historical-cultural contributions that have characterized them, have brought to light the centrality of the Resistance in the entire succeeding political-cultural history of the counuy, but also as it is seen perhaps today by the large majority of politicians and the intellectuals active during the First Republic in a perspective that is more political than in past. In the collapse of ideologies generally and particularly of the many values considered “strong” until recently, the Resistance remains one of the very few points on which to try to find the raison d’être, the legitimation of one’s own power and one’s own share in an otherwise politically and ethically indefensible system.... It doesn’t come as a surprise therefore that—contrary to what happened in other countries and particularly in France—here in Italy the fiftieth anniversary of the Resistance (and of the RSI) has not given rise (at least until today) to a true historiographical debate. And it doesn’t surprise us that the few attempts to come to grips with a position are all of a traditional type instead of attempting to move the discourse to different terrain from that of 1943-45: that of anti-fascism, that of the (presumed) identity between fascism and Nazism, that of the Resistance as civil war and of its character, that of the position of the communists with regard

to democracy and above all that of the “irreducible connection” between the Resistance and republican Constitution and of the “new form of patriotism” (not longer patriotism “of the Nation,” but “of the Constitution”) that descends from it.... Now, the obligatory question is: why is it that after fifty years, the culture of this country has not succeeded and, all in all, does not want to (with a few exceptions) settle accounts with the history of its past? It has created only a series of alibis that assume the form of the self-pity and the denigration of a people that the intellectual class doesn’t know or to which it attributes features that it does not have. To answer the question: the country lacks the scientific habitus, true researchers are lacking, it lacks a vision of the world able to look beyond political pragmatism.... The fundamental themes needed to settle accounts with our own history (e.g. 8 September 1943, the Resistance, the RSI) and, closely related to it, on the disintegrative tensions that permeate Italian society today, are experienced by the intellectual community as an indistinct and undesirable background noise. Anti-fascism cannot constitute the only explanatory principle in understanding the historical significance of the Resistance. Nor does it follow that the anti-fascist “label” can replace the democratic “label” or that the two years 1943-1945 must be interpreted in the vast river bed of the collective crisis that conditioned the circumstances since that time and which influences those of today; or that the hierarchy of value of “anti-fascist purity” to whose vertex the PCI immediately placed itself, doesn’t find resonance anymore (if it ever had) among the majority of Italians. Neither fascists, nor anti-fascists, nor communists, nor anti-communists are legitimized to explain to the people what happened in those two years or how decisive they have been for the history of today’s Italy. And, after all, the people no longer trust them anymore and consider them sellers of myths in which it no longer believes and to whom it attributes a good part of the responsibilities for the situation in which Italy finds itself today. What is even more serious, the people extend this negative judgment of the reconstruction of the past done by intellectuals to all of history. The result is that which Rosario Romeo feared, in a less degraded context twenty years ago: that of increasing that crisis of identity among Italians. And that today is more and more difficult to halt. Renzo De Felice, Rosso e nero (Milan: Baldini & Castoldi, 1995), 12-25; trans. Stanislao G. Pugliese.

55 The Legacy of Fascism Nicola Tranfaglia Nicola Tranfaglia, originally from Naples, has been a professor of contemporary history at the University of Turin since 1976. He is a major contributor to Italian historiography and has written or edited dozens of books, most notably Carlo Rosselli (1968), Labirinto italiano: Il fascismo, l’antifas-cismo, gli storici (1989), La mafia come metodo (1991), Mafia, politica, affari (1992), and, with M. Ridolfi, 1946: La nascita della Repubblica (1996). His Un passato scomodo was written as a reply to Renzo De Felice’s Rosso e nero. Here he argues that fascism has created “an uncomfortable past” for the Italians and laments the long-lasting effects of fascism into the postwar period. Since the old political system that began in 1945 sank a few years back, Italians have noted the difficulty in turning a page in history and in replacing a political class that is by now completely discredited. Contemporaneously, even the re-reading of recent history and the relationship that that past has with the present in which we live, has become difficult. The confusion has its roots in the crisis that Italy has been living with now for two decades and which has become more rapid and devastating these last few years. But the confusion has increased because of a tendency assumed by the powerful means of mass communication: the tendency toward “television sensationalism” that consists in privileging every opinion that raises scandal, any thesis that arouses polemics, novelty for its own sake, independently from its scientific and cultural validity. In turn a similar tendency is the complete victory of the model that commercial television (entertainment, escapism, titillation in the place of information) has imposed in the 1980s— first on public television, then on the daily newspapers and on the weeklies, and which sees the one and the other in a desperate and vain chase after the medium of television. Everyone ignores what has already happened in the countries in which television hegemony has occurred before it has happened in Italy. The pursuit of the television model has been seen to be useless

and even self-defeating for the readers of printed matter, yet it is true that the percentages of those using television have grown in general and, contrarily, the printed word has recorded a general decline in the last three-four years in the number of buyers and readers. In partial justification of journalists (very partial, one should understand) for what is happening, one can only remember that the Italian journalism market is particularly narrow because of the attitudes and scarce reading habits of Italians in comparison to the other European countries.... The incapability of our schools to create effective antibodies (through a teaching of history suitable to the times) to a superficial understanding is all too clear; it is often mistaken, polemical and sensationalistic. If historical popularization is left almost entirely to the operators of the means of mass communication, this happens because of the scarce attention that historians devote to this aspect of their profession; an aspect that has an increasing social importance.... In our country, even today, inside the guild of the historians, to write a popular text is seen almost like prostituting oneself; and one who does so risks being harshly reproached by his or her judges and examiners, and then, for the rest of their life, by their colleagues. The confusion is fed by the scarce consciousness that the Italians have, and particularly the younger generation, concerning a central problem of our past. The problem can be synthesized thus: the history of united Italy is little more than 130 years old and, in the moment in which it has modernized, passing from an agrarian society to an industrial society, the liberal State, founded by the protagonists of national unification, did not stand fast and surrendered to the first fascist movement in Europe. There are those who will say immediately that I exaggerate, since the dictatorship lasted only twenty years, that in retrospect those twenty years are a small part of the 130 years since our national unification. But I have to remind readers that the fascist regime collapsed essentially in the wake of the Second World War and that a very similar regime, that founded by Francisco Franco in Spain in 1939 (because he avoided becoming involved in the world conflict) lasted for another thirty years, that is, up to the death of the dictator. The same fate could have happened probably to the Italians if Mussolini had maintained his promise of “non anbelligerency” proclaimed in 1939. Certainly, the foreign policy of the dictator began with the decision to revise the system put in place with the Treaty of Versailles, giving a maximum amount of time for a resounding colonial enterprise (the Ethiopian War); and this inevitably put into crisis an unspoken alliance with Great Britain, pushing Italy closer to Hitler’s Germany. But as often happens in history, an expansionist and revisionist strategy had been conditioned by doubts or exceptional decisions made at the last minute. And therefore, at least in the abstract, a possibility existed of not entering the war: if it had been realized, the fascist dictatorship could have been able to last many more years. Neither the domestic opposition nor that in exile would have been victorious. This is my opinion and it leads us in glimpsing a bitter destiny for the Italians, analogous to that of the Spanish people. One must be aware of this possibility in any evaluation of how the Mussolini dictatorship has influenced our history. Therefore it is necessary to recognize that fascism closed its parabola

in twenty years not by internal consumption, but essentially because of a blow that came from beyond its borders. It is necessary to add, besides, that the legacy of fascism has been very long and lasting and it has profoundly marked the first fifteen years of republican Italy and noticeably even the following decades until today.... One can not forget that in the years from the declaration of the Republic in 1946 until the elections of 1953, the Christian Democracy [DC] affirmed its monopoly on the government, sustained not only by a moderate social block comprised of large and medium-sized industrial enterprises, the small clerical middle class of public administration and the civil services, and commercial dealers but also a not inconsequential part of Catholic workers and southern farmers. The moderate Catholic block formed on two foundations: on the one side, the opposition to communism and socialism which looked to a Stalinist Soviet Union as their model; the other a refusal to countenance any radical reform of the apparatus of the State and the relationships between the social classes. This social block vindicates the fascist past. The DC, in particular, in those first years, managed to succeed the fascist party almost naturally in its privileged position not only with the state and ministerial bureaucracy but also with the large industrial groups and the major banks with state intervention. The revocation in 1948 of the laws for the purge of compromised officials with the fascist regime (it is not true, as some write, that an attempt at a purge did not occur) joined, in fact, the bureaucrats to the majority party [the DC] in a link of fidelity and collaboration that was destined to last a long time in republican Italy. During the same time, the DC had succeeded in using the remarkable influence still wielded by the Catholic Church in Rome and from its collateral organizations, calling itself the “Christian party,” defender of the faith against atheistic communism, defender of national identity against the philosoviet internationalism of communists and socialists. In this way, the Catholic party also inherited, at least for a notable part of its managing class of the center and the right, the traditionalist Catholic culture that survived after the collapse of the fascist dictatorship: one has to simply read the major official Catholic magazines in the 1940s and 1950s to perceive that a great deal of that conservative cultural traditionalism was still very much alive, and at times openly reactionary; this came from the 1930s and from the compromise in Europe with the fascist dictatorships. Nicola Tranfaglia, Un passato scomodo: Fascismo e postfascismo (Rome: Laterza, 1996), 5-10; trans. Stanislao G. Pugliese. Reprinted by permission of Laterza Puhlishers.

56 Eternal Fascism Umberto Eco This essay was first presented at a symposium organized by the Italian Department of Columbia University in New York City on 25 April 1995 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Italy from fascism and the Nazi occupation. Eco, a bestselling novelist and a professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna, borrows a term from the field of logic to define Italian fascism as a form of “fuzzy” totalitarianism. He begins by challenging some of the arguments made by revisionist and right-wing historians and then goes on to map out a “topology” of fascism. Notice the similarities with Carlo Levi’s warning about an “eternal fascism. ” In spite of some fuzziness regarding the difference between various historical forms of fascism, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call UrFascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition. Traditionalism is of course much older than fascism. Not only was it typical of counterrevolutionary Catholic thought after the French revolution, but is was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism. In the Mediterranean basin, people of different religions (most of the faiths indulgently accepted by the Roman pantheon) started dreaming of a revelation received at the dawn of human history. This revelation, according to the traditionalist mystique, had remained for a long time concealed under the veil of forgotten languages—in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the Celtic runes, in the scrolls of the little-known religions of Asia.

The Duce Restored. A base-relief by Publio Morbiducci that is over the entrance to the EUR Administration Building (Palazzo degli Uffici) designed by Gaetano Minucci. (Courtesy of Borden Painter, Trinity College.) This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, “the combination of different forms of belief or practice;” such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and although they seem to say different or incompatible things, they all are nevertheless alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth. As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth already has been spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message. If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine, who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge—that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism. Both Fascists and Nazis worshiped technology, while traditionalist thinkers usually reject it as a negation of traditional spiritual values. However, even though Nazism was proud of its industrial achievements, its praise of modernism was only the surface of an ideology based upon blood and earth (Blut und Boden). The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life. The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of UrFascism, from Hermann Goering’s fondness for a phrase from a Hanns Johst play (“When I hear the word ‘culture’ I reach for my gun”) to the frequent use of such expressions as “degenerate intellectuals,” “eggheads,” “effete snobs,” and “universities are nests of reds.” The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus UrFascism is racist by definition. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old “proletarians” are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the

fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascisrn says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the United States, a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson’s The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy. For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle. Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such “final solutions” implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament. Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak. Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people in the world, the members or the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. In fact, the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler. In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Spanish Falangists was Viva la Muerte (“Long Live Death!”). In non-fascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The UrFascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters. This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality).

Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons— doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise. Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say. In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view—one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People. Because of its qualitative populism, Ur-Fascism must be against “rotten” parliamentary governments. Wherever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in 1984, as the official language of what he called Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning. But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show. Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier for us if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, “I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Blackshirts to parade again in the Italian squares.” Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances—every day, in every part of the world. Franklin Roosevelt’s words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling: “If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.” Freedom and liberation are an unending task. The New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995. Umberto Eco, “Eternal Fascism,” New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995.

57 The Battle over the Past Alexander Stille In 2002, the government of right-wing prime minister Silvio Berlusconi proposed a drastic rewriting of the country’s history textbooks to purge them of “left-wing bias. ” A corollary to this proposal recommended the abolition of the many Historical Institutes dedicated to the study of the armed Resistance. Since 1995—the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II—there has been a protracted and often times bitter debate over the scale, significance, and repercussions of the Resistance. Here, scholar, journalist, and historian Alexander Stille writes about recent developments in the continuing struggle to define and interpret the past. In the summer of 2002, the head of the Italian state broadcasting system (RAI), Antonio Baldassarre, addressed the national congress of the National Alliance, the right-wing party led principally by “post-fascists,” and announced that it was time to “rewrite history” as it is presented on Italian television. “The old RAI represented only one culture and not others,” he said. “Often, they didn’t tell real history, but told fables, offered one-sided interpretations.” This call to “rewrite history,” before a party, many of whose leaders were ardent admirers of Italian fascism, had a very clear meaning: no more “one-sided” portrayals of anti-fascists as noble patriots and fascists as evil villains. The disinterested pursuit of historical truth is supposed to take no note of the shifting political winds. The reality, of course, is more complex. History, some cynics say, is written by the winners. At the end of World War II, the anti-fascists—kept out of public life for twenty years of fascism—got to tell their story and named streets and piazzas after their heroes. With the return of a center-right government in 2001, whose second largest party is the National Alliance, many on the right feel that it is their turn.

Much history has been rewritten in Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, but in Italy, the process has been doubly complex. The last thirteen years have seen both the dissolution of the old Italian Communist Party—Western Europe’s largest—and the rehabilitation of a party that, until recently, did nothing to hide its admiration for Mussolini and fascism. Until recently, the Italian Communists represented roughly one-third of the Italian electorate, scrupulously obeyed the rules of parliamentary democracy, and governed major cities and regions. And with an unusually high number of of writers, university professors, film makers, journalists, book publishers, and museum directors gravitating in its orbit, the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) enjoyed particular cultural prestige (some would say hegemony). At the same time, the new Italian Republic made it illegal to reconstitute the fascist party of Benito Mussolini. Those who refused to renounce their faith in Il Duce regrouped in a thinlydisguised neo-fascist party called the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), which garnered between 3 and 8 percent of the national vote. Its cultural weight was even less than its electoral strength. For most of its history, the MSI was headed by Giorgio Almirante, whose principal distinction was in having been an editor of La Difesa della razza (Defense of the Race), a magazine created in 1938 by the fascist regime when it decided to embrace the antiSemitic and racist politics of Nazi Germany and the party appeared to offer little more than fading nostalgia. With the death of Almirante in 1988 and the MSI vote stuck at about 5 percent, the party seemed destined for extinction, the relic of an era now truly ended. But events in Italy offered it unexpected opportunities for a new life: the corruption scandals that began in 1992 and wiped out the country’s principal governing parties, leaving a huge vacuum waiting to be filled. In 1994, under the leadership of Gianfranco Fini, the party changed its name to Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance), distanced itself from its fascist past and moved decisively toward the center. Suddenly, the party jumped from 5.4 to 13.6 percent of the vote and it became the principal partner of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, the TV magnate turned politician. In 2001, Berlusconi returned to power with Fini as his deputy prime minister. (At the same time, the old Italian Communist Party has split into two separate parties, their share of the vote has diminished, and they are badly on the defensive.) This transformation depended on significant changes in Italy’s discussion of its history, of Communism and of fascism. Fini could not have become deputy prime minister had he and his party not taken steps to revise their views on fascism. Fini criticized Mussolini’s racial laws and his alliance with Hitler’s Germany, he made trips to Auschwitz and Israel. More recently, he publicly recanted a statement he had made ten years ago about Mussolini being the greatest statesman of the twentieth century. At the same time, Fini proclaimed that April 25— commemorating the day in 1945 when World War II ended in Italy—was a day of celebration for all Italians, bringing the return of liberty and democracy. This was a significant move. Most of the leaders of the old MSI and many in the newer National Alliance had been young volunteers in the Republic of Salò, the Italian government that fought alongside of Hitler, which Mussolini had reconstituted in late 1943, after Italy had officially withdrawn from the war and thrown in its lot with the Anglo-American allies. For them, April 25—the equivalent of July 4

in the United States or July 14, Bastille Day, in France—was a day of bitter defeat. But it not just Fini who has made changes. The rehabilitation of the National Alliance would not have been possible, in all likelihood, without a gradual softening of the portrayal of fascism both in the scholarly literature and the popular press. For much of the postwar period, Mussolini was depicted as part-criminal, part-buffoon, whose regime was a twenty-year “parenthesis” in the democratic history of Italy begun with its independence in 1860. This consensus was challenged during the 1970s by the historian Renzo De Felice, who spent more than thirty years working on a multi-volurne biography of Mussolini which has become a cornerstone of all historiography of fascism. De Felice insisted that the demonization of fascism failed to explain adequately how fascism could arise and hold power for twenty years in one of the principal countries of Europe. Mussolini, De Felice argued, enjoyed widespread popularity and governed, he argued, with the consensus of most of the country up until World War II. De Felice’s biography of Mussolini rested on a fundamental distinction between Italian fascism and German national socialism. Fascism, despite its own claim to being a “totalitarian” regime, was a softer dictatorship, which left much of the liberal bureaucracy in place, made peace with the Catholic Church and did not share Hitler’s obsession with racism and the Jews. Although De Felice was unfairly accused by some as being an apologist for fascism, he did seem to respond to the attacks on him by becoming increasingly polemical and defensive, softpedaling the uglier side of fascism, minimizing Mussolini’s personal responsibility in some of its crimes, the killing of his political opponents and the disastrous conduct of World War II. During the 1980s, cruder and more simplified versions of the De Felice theses began to circulate. Contrary to Baldassarre’s assertion that RAI has only told one side of the story of fascism, the state broadcasting system used De Felice as consultant on numerous broadcasts and hired a number of his less-refined acolytes to make documentaries, some of them offering admiring portraits of leading fascist figures. The 1985 documentary Tutti gli uomini del Duce, (All the Duce’s Men) offered a sympathetic gallery of portraits of leading fascists, focusing on the personal traits of individuals rather than the consequences of their actions. There were a couple of films on the efforts of Italian Army officials to save and rescue Jews during World War II. The stories these films told were true enough but tended to gloss over the other side of the coin: Mussolini’s draconian racial laws forced Jews out of all public life and made it much easier for them to track down and deport Jews during the German occupation—a task in which the fascists of the Republic of Salò provided crucial aid. In response to Baldassarre’s remarks about the one-sided left-wing history of the state broadcasting system, James Walston, a professor of history at the American University of Rome pointed out that RAI had run films that focused on the courageous efforts of Italian Army officials’ efforts to save and rescue Jews during World War II, while glossing over aspects such as the devastating effects of Mussolini’s racial laws, or the Republic of Salò’s collaboration with the Nazis in rounding ups and deporting Jews. “Some fourteen years ago I worked on a BBC history documentary called ‘Fascist Legacy,’ which dealt with Italian war crimes and attempts by the Allies (mainly the British) to cover

them up,” Walston wrote in Italy Daily, a supplement to the International Herald Tribune. “Soon afterward, the film was bought by RAI. The Italian soundtrack has been recorded but since then, silence. They spent public money to in order to silence a film which was critical of Fascist Italy.” Rather than there being a left-wing hegemony in demonizing fascism, others believe that De Felice exercised undue influence in determining the way history was written. By declaring that Mussolini was not Hitler, he closed the door on good, comparative research between Germany and Italy. De Felice was in the unusual position of having first access to the documents of the Italian state as they were being declassified. De Felice kept much important archival material at his home and controlled access carefully. “Other scholars had to get De Felice’s permission to consult many documents,” says Victoria De Grazia, professor of history at Columbia University in New York City. “As the authority on Mussolini and a full professor at the University of Rome, he controlled a lot of appointments in the highly-politicized field of contemporary history, assigning many inconsequential theses. Because he controlled so much of the archives, the left was always in a subaltern position.” Some of the historical revisionism was healthy and necessary for restoring a more threedimensional view of Italy’s recent past. Other historians, even some who were critical of De Felice, acknowledged that fascism was no parenthesis, but had built on powerful elements of nationalism, colonialism and anti-democratic feeling that were integral important parts of prefascist Italian life. Historians with impeccable anti-fascist credentials, such as Claudio Pavone, who wrote Una Guerra civile (A Civil War) offered a more complex view of the struggle between partisans and fascists at the end of World War II. Most anti-fascist historians, especially those close to the Communists, used the term “War of Liberation” to refer to the efforts of the Allies and the partisans to defeat the Nazis and Mussolini’s reconstituted Republic of Salò. To use the words “civil war,” in their view, was to grant the fascists equal status with the partisans. But, as Pavone pointed out, many partisans used the term “civil war,” and that it better described the reality of the times: however misguided, tens of thousands of repubblichini had voluntarily fought and risked or gave their lives out of a sense of loyalty to fascism. This historical view crept into public life in 1997 when Luciano Violante, president of the lower house of the Italian parliament and a member of the post-Communist Democratic Party of the Left, asked that “republican” soldiers be recognized as men of good faith who, right or wrong, had fought to defend their country. In the last several years, these revisionist tendencies have gone considerably farther. In 1996, Ernesto Galli della Loggia, a respected historian and political commentator in his book La morte della patria, (the death of the fatherland) even blamed the anti-fascist partisans for the death of national feeling in Italy. By suddenly switching sides from Germany to the Allies, the anti-fascists helped divide the country in two. Galli della Loggia ignored other simpler and far more plausible explanations for the diminution of patriotic feeling in Italy. Twenty years of fascist propaganda—beating the drums of war; denigrating other nations—revealed to be completely empty by a disastrous war that left the country in ruins with more a million Italians

dead, had thoroughly discredited nationalism in Italy. Patriotism met a similar fate in Germany where there was no partisan civil war. One of the more curious publications in this apologetic vein was a short memoir by Roberto Vivarelli, a respected historian of fascism, long considered anti-fascist, who revealed that, as a young boy of fourteen, he had volunteered and fought with the Republic of Salò. The child of a fascist family, whose father had been killed in Yugoslavia and whose sixteen year old brother had run away to fight with the fascists, Vivarelli explained how it seemed morally imperative that he, too, should fight to defend the Fatherland. But what most surprised and shocked many people was that rather than presenting this as a choice dictated by extreme youth and inexperience, he continued to defend it energetically. “Certain debts of loyalty must be paid, even if they involve defeat ... I do not regret my choice, on the contrary, I would repeat it.” A strange confirmation of the reversal of the usual opposition between “good partisans” and “evil fascists” came in 1997 when a Rome magistrate opened an investigation of the partisans who carried out the attack of Via Rasella, in which thirty-three German soldiers were killed. The judge, Maurizio Pacioni, maintained that the partisans were responsible for the death of an eleven-year-old boy accidentally killed by the partisans’ bomb but shelved the case because of an amnesty over crimes from the fascist period. (Members of the National Alliance— understanding the importance of history—had urged the boy’s family to press charges.) The case was dropped because of the post-war amnesty; nonetheless, what had always been regarded as a heroic episode had now, in the eyes of some, been criminalized. This romantic version of the Republic of Salò has seeped into popular culture. Recent broadcasts treating the “civil war,” according to historian Massimo Salvadori, have tended to portray partisans no longer as heroes but as opportunistic turncoats who jumped onto the winning bandwagon and repubblichini as more morally coherent, refusing to abandon their cause even when it was clear it was destined to lose. The need to recognize former repubblichini in the government as people of good faith, has distorted the historical discussion, Salvadori says. “What matters to me as an historian is not good faith, but the objective consequences of people’s actions,” he said. “Many Nazi storm troopers were no doubt also in good faith, believing they were serving their country, but what were the consequences of their actions? The Republic of Salò fought along side of Hitler and if they had won, it would have meant dictatorship in Italy and the rest of Europe. The consequence of the partisan struggle was to restore democracy and civil liberties to Italy. So, on the plane of objective consequences, I think it’s possible to say one was right and the other wrong.” Oddly enough, in a period in which many are bending over backwards to be fair to fascism, it takes a former neofascist like Gianfranco Fini to state publicly that the end of fascism was a victory for freedom and democracy that should be celebrated by all Italians. A previous version of this chapter originally appeared in the New York Times.

58 My Seven Sons Alcide Cervi After the Armistice of 8 September 1943, a veritable civil war broke out in Italy. Germany sent reinforcements into the peninsula as Nazis and fascists continued a desperate attempt to retain control of the country. The antifascist Resistance began military action, recruiting thousands of men and women from all walks of life. The Nazis and fascists considered the partisans brigands and outlaws and treated them accordingly. Reprisals for partisan actions were swift and brutal. If the Nazis and fascists were unable to execute the partisans, they would round up civilians to be massacred. The Nazis imposed a ratio of ten civilians to be killed for every German soldier killed by partisan attacks. The most notorious atrocity took place in Marzabotto, near Bologna, where at least 1,830 people were massacred, with numerous women and children among them. As we have seen, another massacre of 335 men and young boys took place in the Ardeatine Caves, just outside Rome, on 24 March 1944, also in retaliation for a partisan attack. Here is a firsthand account of a peasant from the Emilia Romagna region who recounts the fate of his seven sons, all antifascists. It is included here as representing the voice and almost unimaginable suffering of the peasantry under Nazi-fascist rule. I raced by bicycle and along the Crostolo. A procession of people was under the trees, because of the bombing. I arrive home at 11:00 P.M. and everyone is asleep. I enter and call and unconsciously look at the coat-stand; my sons have not returned. My wife Genoveffa and our daughters-in-law kiss me, they embrace me warmly, they ask me how I am, they bring me into the kitchen and they make me drink something warm. Nobody speaks of the boys and then I ask: “Do we know anything about the boys?” The wife answers as if distracted: “If you don’t know, we don’t know anything.” Then I understand that is necessary to raise their spirits and I say:

“They have brought them to Parma for the trial, Pedrini told me so himself and then so did the lawyer Mariani. The boys are good at trials, you will see that sooner or later we will see them again at home.” But she didn’t want to discuss it, and our daughters-in-law kept silent, they gathered round me to refresh me. “And if they haven’t brought them to Parma, what if it’s a lie?” asked my wife who was trying to discern my state of mind. And I insisted and tried to encourage her. “If they have not brought them to Parma they will have deported them to Poland for work, imagine, with all the training that they have.” My wife stopped speaking on this because she understood that I didn’t know. We went to bed and she told me to sleep calmly and she gave me a kiss. For a month and half she didn’t tell me a word about our sons. She waited until I recuperated from the ulcer and from prison, and so every evening—with the secret in her heart —she went to bed with me; I who didn’t understand and spoke of our sons as if they were alive. I said, when Ferdinando returns it is necessary to tell him that the beehives must be renewed, and Aldo, I’ll send him to look for some Swiss cattle and Gelindo must find the condensed milk which is finished. Mother kept silent while I tortured her. One day she tried to make me understand and said: “Our sons won’t return, don’t you see how many dead there are on the roads that are not recognized, among them there will be also our sons.” And I, stubborn, replied: “You always making bad prophecies, you’ve always been that way.” Then my wife lost her patience and said: “Our sons won’t be coming back. All seven have been shot.” I remained still and silent, then I asked: “They won’t be coming back?” And my wife: “No, they won’t be coming back; all seven have been killed.” The daughters-in-law drew near me, and I cried for my children. Then I said after the weeping: “After one harvest comes another. We go forward.” ...

THE DEATH OF MY SONS AND THEIR MOTHER After I knew what happened, a great remorse came over me. I had not understood anything, and I had said goodbye to them with a wave of the hand that last time, hopeful that they were going to trial and they would have given it to the fascists; they who were so smart and full of stratagems. And instead they went to die. They knew, but they wanted to leave me the illusion, and they said goodbye to me smiling: with a smile they said their last goodbye to me. O my sons, why did you pity me my old age, why didn’t you tell me that you were to be shot? I would have howled at the fascists, as I have always done, and perhaps you would not have died. Now that they have told me everything, and your companions in prison have repeated your last words to me, my remorse is great. When the fascist guard said to you: go to sleep, nothing will happen until tomorrow, you, Gelindo answered: “Why do you want us to go to sleep; we’ve been asleep too long and we are going toward an eternal sleep.” But I didn’t hear that otherwise I would have understood. And when you, Ettore, the smallest and the dearest, left your white sweater to Codeluppi, I asked you: “why are you leaving it with him? In Parma it will be cold.” And you smiled at me without answering me. But I now know that you said to Codeluppi “why let it get full of holes?

It is new; hold it for your child, at least it will serve for something.” Why have you done this, my sons? Is it my fault if I have always believed in you; that no one would defeat you? Hasn’t it always been like this when we were together and when you returned victorious from the trials, from prison, from the battles with the fascists, from the shots of the partisans? But of death, of death we had never given any thought. I, full of pride, deserve the remorse, for I believed you untouchable from death. And even if in the jail you had said to me that you could have died, I would not have believed it, my blood wouldn’t believe it and would have rebelled. But fathers and mothers are made that way, I now understand. They think that they will die, that the world will also die, but that their children will never leave them, even after death, and that they will always be around to joke with their children, that they have raised for so many years, and death is extraneous. What does death know of our sacrifices, of the kisses that you have given me even when you were older, of the vigils that I have passed beside your beds, seven sons; sacrifices, kisses, vigils that take up a whole life. And you, Gelindo, who were always ready with an answer, now you no longer recognize me nor answer me? And you, Ettore, who hid in the tall grass saying: “I’m not here.” Now the tall grass has covered you completely and you are not there anymore. And you, Aldo, you stronger and more cunning than life, you allowed yourself to be conquered by death? Cursed is the pity and cursed is he from heaven who had closed my ears and veiled my eyes, so that I didn’t understand, and stayed alive in your place! We know nothing more of your last moments, neither a phrase, nor a look, nor a thought. You seven were all together, even before death, and I know that you embraced each and kissed each other, and before the shots were fired Gelindo cried out: you fascists may kill us, but we will never die! It’s true, my sons, your father was right, blood never deceives, you cannot die. And this is a source of strength that keeps me going, that doesn’t allow me to collapse from the feeling, otherwise I would have followed you quickly, as did your mother. I suffered this way and I thought day and night about you, but as my wife had hidden her heart from me for a month and half, I hid this from her to encourage her. Then, the certainty of the justness of their cause, the partisans, the women, the comrades, the workers, the flowers, the plaques, the affections of so many people who have embraced my sons, have given me enormous strength that enables me to withstand the tragedy. This strength has become clearer in the last years; I have never lost it, even in that moment when mother told me of the executions. Later, they told me what happened at the executions. On December 27, a gappista executed the fascist secretary of Bagnolo in Piano. The leaders of the province were morbidly gathered the same night in front of the corpse, and they swore revenge: “Ten for every one,” they shouted, having learned from the Germans. The federale read a list of names, but someone suggests the idea: “Let’s shoot the seven Cervi brothers.” Good idea, the comrade is intelligent, and the decision is made. In fact they bring them to the shooting range, and there on the field Don Stefano came forward, the priest we met in prison, and he asked if they wanted to confess. My sons responded that they had no sins to repent, and the fascist are happy, because they are in a big hurry. The leader of the firing squad asks the militiamen who wants to have the honor to shoot,

and a militiaman by the name of Vulcano says: I ask the honor, and so did others, until they were enough for a firing squad. Don Stefano later said my sons died as cynics, and instead he has survived as a cynic, because his place as a Christian was with the innocent, and not with the executioners. But by now what is done is done.... My sons were buried at the Villa Ospizio and during the bombardment the coffins were unearthed.... And from that day forward, my wife and I lived only for the eleven grandchildren. But her eyes were no longer of this earth, and her hands had learned how to work on their own, because her mind was far away, with her children. Every once in a while, I tried to encourage her, but it was like when I returned from the jail, and she looked at me with pained eyes. She went about like this and didn’t read more and she didn’t even go to church, but repeated, like Jesus on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” And the fascists continued to hate ... they came to burn the house on 10 October 1944. On that day we were just two old people, four women and eleven children. But for the fascists, even the elderly, women and children were things to be burned. So they came at night, like thieves, and they set fire to the barn, then they ran away. We got out of the house and together, threw water, the children too. When she saw the flames, my wife Genoveffa again heard the shots of that other night; the shots, our sons with their hands raised high in the courtyard, the goodbyes and the van that took them away. So fell that blow that her heart could not resist and she suffered a heart attack. She remained in bed for a month, and her only thought was for her grandchildren. She wanted at least to sew something, but she had to stay still in bed, not even turning over on her side. She died on the l4th of November, 1944, unconsciousness. During her agony she had said: “I return to be with my children.” And her children were already in the heart of so many partisans who were then organizing, and that is how the Cervi battalion was born. The hatred for the Germans magnified in the countryside and in the cities until the walls of the prison crumbled and there opened in Italy the sky of liberation. Alcide Cervi. I miei sette figli, trans. Stanislao G. Pugliese (Rome: Riuniti, 1995), 25-32, 13744.

59 Memory and Massacres Alessandro Portelli No one disputes the fact that the Nazis executed 335 men and boys on 24 March 1944 just outside Rome in the Ardeatine Caves (see chapter 52). However, the interpretation of the act was disputed as early as the day after. The tragedy of the Fosse Ardeatine functions as a collective Rorschach test for contemporary Italians. Some contend that the partisans knowingly provoked the massacre by their attack and then failed to turn themselves in. Here, Alessandro Portelli demonstrates how memory can rewrite history: There was no request on the part of the Nazis for the partisans to turn themselves in, yet there are those in Rome who “remember” posters calling for them to do so. Hence, the moral responsibility for the massacre was shifted from the Germans to the communist partisans. Portelli’s The Order Has Already Been Carried Out is a work of oral history, semiotics, and contemporary analysis on how the past is constantly rewritten to serve the political, psychological, and social needs qf the present. On March 25, 1944, the newspapers in Rome published a release from the state news agency. It was issued the night before by the German command of the occupied city. “During the afternoon of 23 March 1944, criminal elements carried out an attack, by throwing bombs at a German Police column which was passing along the Via Rasella. In consequence of this attack, 32 German policemen were killed and several wounded. This vile ambush was carried out by Badoglio-Communist elements.... The German Command is firmly determined to put an end to the activity of these heartless bandits.... The German Command, therefore, has given orders that for every German killed, ten Badoglio-Communist criminals will be shot. This order has already been carried out.”

Vanda Perretta: “My mother reading aloud, half aloud, the posted bill that ended: ‘the order has already been carried out.’ This phrase ‘the order has already been carried out’ has stayed in my mind. concerning the Fosse Ardeatine.” The next day, the official newspaper of the Vatican, the Osseruatore Ro-memo, carried the German press release, along with an editorial comment: “When facing such events, any honest soul is deeply pained in the name of humanity and of Christian sentiments. On one hand, thirtytwo victims; on the other, three hundred and twenty persons [sic] sacrificed for the culprits who have escaped arrest.... Standing apart from and above the struggle ... we invoke from these irresponsible parties a respect for human life, which they never have a right to sacrifice; and the respect for innocence, which is fatally the victim; from those guilty, we ask that they be conscious of their responsibility toward themselves, toward the lives they wish to safeguard, and toward history and civilization.” This book is basically a reflection on two formulations that dominate the German and the Vatican texts: “this order has already been carried out,” and the clear-cut distinction between a crime with “victims” (the Germans) and “culprits” (the partisans) on the one side, and a sacrifice (the 335 “persons sacrificed” in retaliation by the Germans at the Ardeatine caves).... So was established that fearful symmetry of action and reaction, attack and retaliation, crime and punishment that will dominate the memory of these events—as if the case had been opened and closed in the space of two paragraphs, as if nothing had happened before and nothing afterwards, as if the sequence of Via Rasella-Fosse Ardeatine was a separate, self-contained, inevitable cycle. The order having been carried out, there is no need to speak of it any longer; let’s place a stone above it, or better yet, as the Nazis did, a heap of pozzolana onto the ruined caves, and a layer of garbage to cover up the stink. But there’s more. The German announcement proclaims a simple truth that the Nazi commanders would reluctantly confirm in their post-war trials: the retaliation was announced only after it had been carried out. There was no request then and no occasion to “surrender” to the Germans to avoid the massacre. A powerful, widespread anti-partisan mythology tells of bills posted throughout the city walls and of radio broadcasts requesting the partisans to turn themselves in and thus prevent the retaliation. There was no such thing, nor was there any real search for the “culprits.” All this has been a matter of public record for Italians for half a century. Yet, these events have been obfuscated by popular beliefs and narratives drenched in ignorance and misinformation, that turn responsibility around and accuse less the Germans of perpetrating the massacre than the partisans of causing it by their “irresponsible” act and by not turning themselves in to prevent the retaliation. This belief, on the one hand, has the appeal of a nonconformist, anti-institutional narrative, a counternarrative to the story of the Resistance as the foundation of the Republic; on the other hand, it avails itself of all the institutional power of agencies, parties, media that occupy a position far from marginal or subaltern in the nation’s public life. It combines, in other words, the attraction of an alternative narrative with the pervasive power of a hegemonic one.

The Osservatore Romano editorial thus seems to suggest that the Germans did try to arrest the “culprits” before they resolved to commit the massacre. They did not; but I am not aware of any corrections or revisions from Church sources. This is the beginning of the shift of guilt, from the Nazi executioners to the “cowardly” and “irresponsible” partisans who ran and hid, leaving the victims of the retaliation to their fate. Along with the political right, media and sources close to the Church and the Catholic world were to play a major part in perpetuating this version over the years, allowing it to seep into the veins of public imagination and thus contributing to poisoning the memory of the event, and along with it the memory of the Resistance, of the identity and origins of the Republic. Here lies the real, long-term success of the Nazi retaliation. On the day I began to think of this book, I mentioned the Fosse Ardeatine to a friend, a very intelligent, highly educated woman in her early forties, with a lifetime of Left activism. She reacted: “Look, I’m asking you this in camera caritatis and would not repeat it elsewhere: why didn’t they turn themselves in?” My friend did not know that the news of the attack and the retaliation was only released after the massacre had taken place, and that therefore there was no request to turn themselves in, nor any opportunity to do so. She did not know that in the 1950s the courts had tried the partisans who had participated in the attack and declared them not responsible for the German retaliation (the Supreme Court rendered a similar verdict in the spring of 1999—so long has this accusation been kept in circulation ). The fact is that I didn’t really know it either—at least, not until the controversy flared again during the trial of Erich Priebke (one of the Nazi executioners, identified in Argentina, extradited to Italy in 1994, finally sentenced to life in 1998). Even though I had never subscribed to the theory of the partisans’ guilt, the origin of this book is due, in part, to my surprise at discovering to what extent I, too, had been subject to some aspects of this false belief. After all, these events are so rooted into Romans’ consciousness as to become an actual part of their common sense. One Saturday morning, November 1997, in the crypt in which the graves are laid at the Fosse Ardeatine, I overhear a conversation between a group of elderly ladies. They are from Tivoli, near Rome; they have been to the Divino Amore [Shrine of Divine Love], a popular holy site nearby, and then came here. They are deeply moved by the place. Some came here soon after the war. But one woman concludes: “And then they gave the gold medal to the one who planted the bomb in Via Rasella, but he’s the one I would have shot. Because if he was such a hero, he might have come out and said: ‘Instead of killing all these people, here I am, I’m the one who did it.’” In my office at the University of Rome, a student, Sara Leoni, tells me a fantastic tale: “My grandmother took in, in her home, one of the people who threw the bomb in Via Rasella— Carla Capponi. And they all kept telling her, you have to confess, or else they’ll kill two hundred people. And she decided she wouldn’t confess.” It’s a mythic tale, like many others whose function is to reinforce the narrators’ personal contact with an important event in history; and it is far from being the only wrong narrative about the actions of the partisans after Via Rasella. Later, Sara Leoni’s aunt explains that the person who stayed with her parents

before and after Via Rasella was actually Carla Capponi’s mother. Yet, she too thinks she remembers heated discussions on the need for the partisans to turn themselves in. Gianfranco Fini, secretary of the post-fascist Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance) party, and the initiator of a process of formal disentanglement of the Italian right from its Fascist origins and identity, explains: “The military action as such was considered—even by the old men who had fought in the Repubblica Sociale [Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic, 194319451, who had remained Fascists to the end—legitimate. What was considered cowardly was the fact that they didn’t turn themselves in, although everyone was aware of the consequences because everyone knew about the law of retaliation.” Mario Fiorentini, one of the organizers of the attack in Via Rasella, comments: “In Rome, if you ask ten persons about Via Rasella, maybe three uphold the point of view of the GAP [Gruppi di Azione Patriottica], two don’t know what to say, and five are against it.” This state of public opinion is based on a few widespread assumptions: that the retaliation was automatic, and therefore the partisans ought to have expected it; that it would have been avoided if they had turned themselves in as the carabiniere Salvo D’Acquisto is said to have done; and that the executioners were not responsible for the massacre because they were merely carrying out orders. The men of the Bozen battalion of German police and the men killed at the Fosse Ardeatine all appear, in equal measure, as victims of the partisans who acted in Via Rasella. The story of Via Rasella and the Fosse Ardeatine is perhaps the one ground on which the discourse of the most extreme right has merged seamlessly with middle-of-the-road common sense, a convergence that makes the prevalent—and false—narratives on the Fosse Ardeatine so deeply disturbing. Alessandro Portelli, “There Was No Request,” in The Order Has Already Been Carried Out, trans. Stanislao Pugliese (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Guide to Further Reading The scholarship on fascism and anti-fascism in Italian is vast; hence, this list is limited to texts in English. In addition to the books mentioned here, more specialized works may be found after some of the documents included in the volume. Useful research tools are Philip V. Cannistraro, ed., Historical Dictionary of Fascist Italy (Westport, Conn: Greenwood, 1982); and James Tasato Mellone, ed., Fascist Italy: A Bibliography of Works in English (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2003). The Journal of Modern Italian Studies and Modern Italy are excellent sources of scholarly articles. Excellent general and comparative studies of fascism include Roger Eatwell, Fascism: A History (New York: Penguin, 1995); Walter Lacqueur, Fascism: Past, Present, Future (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Stanley G. Payne, A Histozy of Fascism, 1914-1945 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995); Alexander J. De Grand, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: The “Fascist” Style of Rule (London: Routledge, 1995); Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: Comparisons and Contrasts, ed. Richard Bessel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Paul Brooker, The Faces of Fraternalism: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan (Oxford: Clarendon; New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). On Italian fascism, see G. A. Borgese, Goliath: The March of Fascism (New York: Viking, 1937); John Whittam, Fascist Italy (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1995); John F. Pollard, The Fascist Experience in Italy (London: Routledge, 1998); Philip Morgan, Italian Fascism, 1919-1945 (Houndmills, U.K.: Macmillan, 1995); Martin Blinkhorn, Mussolini and Fascist. Italy (London: Routledge, 1994); Mark Robson, Italy, Liberalism and Fascism 1870-1945 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1992); Edward Tannenbaum, The Fascist Experience: Italian Society and Cultura, 1922-1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1972). Indispensable for the historical and intellectual context is Norberto Bobbio, Ideological Profile of Twentieth-Century Italy, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995). For early fascism and local studies, see Alexander J. De Grand, The Italian Nationalist Association and the Rise of Fascism in Italy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978); Adrian Lyttelton, The Seizure of Power: Fascism in Italy, 1919-1929 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987); David Roberts, The Syndicalist Tradition and Italian Fascism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979); Anthony L. Cardoza, Agrarian Elites and Italian Fascism: The Province of Bologna, 1901-1926 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982); Jonathan Dunnage, The Italian Police and the Rise of Fascism: A Case Study of the Province of Bologna, 1897-1925 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger,

1997); Alice A. Kelikian, Town and Country under Fascism: The Transformation of Brescia, 1915-1926 (Oxford: Clarendon; New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Paul Corner, Fascism in Ferrara, 1915-1925 (London: Oxford University Press, 1975); Alexander De Grand, Italian Fascism: Its Origins and Development (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982); Frank M. Snowden, Violence and Great Estates in the South of Italy: Apulia, 1900-1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); David D. Roberts, The Syndicalist Tradition and Italian Fascism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979). For documents, see the reader edited by Roger Griffin, Fascism (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Charles F. Delzell, ed., Mediterranean Fascism, 1919-1945 (New York: Macmillan, 1970); Shepard B. Clough and Salvatore Saladino, A History of Modern Italy: Documents, Readings, Commentary (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968); and Jeffrey T. Schnapp, ed., A Primer of Italian Fascism (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000). Biographies of Mussolini include R. J. B. Bosworth, Mussolini (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 1982); Jasper Ridley, Mussolini: A Biography (New York: St. Martin’s, 1998). Older studies in English include Laura Fermi (the Jewish wife of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi), Mussolini (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961); James A. Gregor, Young Mussolini and the Intellectual Origins of Fascism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979); Ivone Kirkpatrick, Mussolini: A Study in Power (New York: Hawthorne, 1964); Richard B. Lyttle, Il Duce: The Rise and Fall of Benito Mussolini (New York: Atheneum, 1987); D. G. Williamson, Mussolini: From Socialist to Fascist (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1997); Richard Lamb, Mussolini and the British (London: Murray, 1997); Christopher Hibbert, Benito Mussolini, a Biography (London: Longmans, 1962); George Seldes, Sawdust Caesar: The Untold History of Mussolini and Fascism (New York: Harper, 1935) Gaudens Megaro, Mussolini in the Making (London: Allen & Unwin, 1938); Richard Collier, Duce! The Rise and Fall of Benito Mussolini (London: Collins, 1971). Of interest for historical reasons are Margherita Grassini Sarfatti, The Life of Benito Mussolini, with a preface by Benito Mussolini, trans. Frederic Whyte (London: Butterworth, 1925); Rachele Mussolini, Mussolini: An Intimate Biography by His Widow, as told to Albert Zarca (New York: Morrow, 1974); Benito Mussolini, My Autobiography (New York: Scribner’s, 1928); and Benito Mussolini, My Rise and Fall (New York: Da Capo, 1998). The most recent biography is Peter Neville’s Mussolini (London: Routledge, 2003). English and American biographers have focused their attention on Mussolini. The only other biographies of fascist leaders in English are Claudio G. Segrè, Italo Balbo: A Fascist Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); Harry Fornari, Mussolini’s Gadfly: Roberto Farinacci (Nashville, Tenn.: University of Nashville Press, 1971); and Ray Moseley, Mussolini’s Shadow: The Double Life of Count Galeazzo Ciano (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999). On the anti-fascist Resistance, see Charles F. Delzell, Mussolini’s Enemies The Italian

Antifascist Resistance (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961; reprint New York: Fertig, 1974); Frank Rosengarten, The Italian AntiFascist Press, 1919-1945 (Cleveland, Oh.: Case Western Reserve University Press, 1968); David Ward, Antifascisms. Cultural Politics in Italy, 1943-46: Benedetto Croce and then Liberals, Carlo Levi and the “Actionists” (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996); Alastair Davidson and Steve Wright, eds., “Never Give In”: The Italian Resistance and Politics (New York: Lang, 1998); Maria Blasio Wilhelm, The Other Italy: Italian Resistance in World War II (New York: Norton, 1988); Dante Anthony Puzzo, The Partisans and the War in Italy (New York: Lang, 1992); Stanislao G. Pugliese, Carlo Rosselli: Socialist Heretic and Antifascist Exile (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999). The most recent works are Robert Katz, The Battle for Rome: The Germans, the Allies, the Partisans, and the Pope, September 1943June 1944 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003) and Peter Gallo, For Love and Country: The Italian Resistance (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2003). Classic anti-fascist texts translated into English are Piero Gobetti, On Liberal Revolution, ed. with an introduction by Nadia Urbinati, trans. William McCuaig, foreword by Norberto Bobbio (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000) and Carlo Rosselli, Liberal Socialism, ed. Nadia Urbinati, trans. William McCuaig (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994). There is a vast and impressive library of works in English on Antonio Gramsci. See especially John Cammett, Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of the Italian Communist Party (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1967); Giuseppe Fiori, Antonio Gramsci: Life of a Revolutionary (London: Verso, 1996); Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, eds., Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International, 1971); Frank Rosengarten, ed., Letters from Prison, 2 vols., trans. Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Joseph A. Buttigieg, ed., Prison Notebooks, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992); David For-gacs, ed., An Antonio Gramsci Reader (New York: Schocken, 1988). Cultural studies of fascism include Maria Susan Stone, The Patron State: Culture and Politics in Fascist Italy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998); Barbara Spackman, Fascist Virilities: Rhetoric, Ideology, and Social Fantasy in Fascist Italy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Emilio Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy, trans. Keith Botsford (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996); Mabel Berezin, Making the Fascist Self: The Political Culture of Interwar Italy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997). Earlier studies include Victoria De Grazia, The Culture of Consent: Mass Organization of Leisure in Fascist Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Tracy H. Koon, Believe, Obey, Fight: Political Socialization of Youth in Fascist Italy, 19221943 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985); Carl Ipsen, Dictating Demography: The Problem of Population in Fascist Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Edward R. Tannenhaum, The Fascist Experience: Italian Society and Culture, 1922-1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1972); Frances Keene, Neither Liberty nor Bread. (New York: Harper, 1940); Doug Thompson, State Control in Fascist Italy: Culture and

Conformity, 192-43 (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1991). More recent studies include Kriss Ravetto, The Unmaking of Fascist Aesthetics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001); Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); and Emily Braun, Mario Sironi and Italian Modernism: Art and Politics under Fascism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000). On film, see James Hay, Popular Film Culture in Fascist Italy: The Passing of the Rex (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987); Angela Dalle Vacche, The Body in the Mirror: Shapes of History in Italian Cinema (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992); Marcia Landy, Fascism in Film: the Italian Commercial Cinema, 1931-1943 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986); and Jacqueline Reich and Piero Garofalo, eds., Re-Viewing Fascism: Italian Cinema, 1922-1943 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002). On economics and the corporate state, see the contemporary account by sympathetic author Carl Theodore Schmidt, The Corporate State in Action: Italy under Fascism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1939); Roland Sarti, Fascism and the Industrial Leadership in Italy, 1919-1940: A Study in the Expansion of Private Power under Fascism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971). On fascism and the Catholic Church, see Richard A. Webster, The Cross and the Fasces: Christian Democracy and Fascism in Italy. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1960); John N. Molony, The Emergence of Political Catholicism in Italy: Partito Popolare 1919-1926 (London: Helm, 1977); Peter C. Kent, The Pope and the Duce: The International Impact of the Lateran Agreements (London: Macmillan, 1981). On women, see Victoria De Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Robin Pickering-Iazzi, Politics of the Visible: Writing Women, Culture, and Fascism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), and her edited collection, Mothers of Invention: Women, Italian Fascism, and Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995); Perry R. Willson, The Clockwork Factory: Women and Work in Fascist Italy (Oxford: Clarendon; New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); David G. Horn, Social Bodies: Science, Reproduction, and Italian Modernity (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994). On women and anti-fascism, see Jane Slaughter, Women and the Italian Resistance, 1943-1945 (Denver, Colorado: Arden, 1997). Some specialized works included John P. Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972); Roy Palmer Domenico, Italian Fascists on Trial, 1943-1948 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); Christopher Duggan, Fascism and the Mafia (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989); Luisa Passerini, Fascism in Popular Memory: The Cultural Experience of the Turin Working Class, trans. Robert Lumley and Jude Bloomfield (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Charles Burdett, Vincenzo Cardarelli and His Contemporaries: Fascist Politics and Literary Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Memoirs from the Resistance include Gordon Lett, Rossano: An Adventure of the Italian Resistance (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1955); Giovanni Pesce, And No Quarter: An

Italian Partisan in World War II, trans. Frederick M. Shaine (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1972); Charles Esme Thornton Warren, The Broken Column (London: Harrap, 1966); Laurence Lewis, Echoes of Resistance: British Involvement with the Italian Partisans (Tunbridge Wells, U.K.: Costello, 1985); Charles Macintosh, From Cloak to Dagger: An SOE Agent in Italy, 1943-1945 (London: Kimber, 1982); Roy Alexander Farran, Operation Tombola (London: Collins, 1960); Stuart Clink Hood, Pebbles from My Skull (London: Hutchinson, 1963); Riccardo Luzzatto, Unknown War in Italy (London: New Europe, 1946). On the Jews and the Holocaust in Italy, see Meir Michaelis, Mussolini and the Jews: German-Italian Relations and the Jewish Question in Italy, 1922-1945 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978); Susan Zuccotti, The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue, Survival (New York: Basic Books, 1987; reprint Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), and her more recent Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000); Alexander Stille, Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families under Fascism (New York: Summit, 1991); Nicola Caracciolo, Italy and the Jews during the Holocaust, ed. and trans. Florette Rechnitz Koffler and Richard Koffler (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995). More theoretical analyses: Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (London: Routledge, 1993); R. J. B. Bosworth, The Italian Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of Mussolini and Fascism (London: Arnold, 1998); Renzo De Felice, Fascism: An Informal Introduction to Its Theory and Practice: An Interview with Michael A. Ledeen (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1976); Renzo De Felice, Interpretations of Fascism, trans. Brenda Huff Everett (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977); R. J. B. Bosworth and Patrizia Dogliani, Italian Fascism: History, Memory, and Representation (Houndmills, U.K.: Macmillan; New York: St. Martin’s, 1999); and the controversial work of Zeev Sternhell, The Birth of Fascist Ideology (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994). In addition, see Giovanni Gentile, Origins and Doctrine of Fascism, trans. and ed. A. James Gregor (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2002). On World War II, see Brian Lamb, War in Italy, 1943-1945: A Brutal Story (New York: Da Capo, 1996); the three books by MacGregor Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, 1939-1941: Politics and Strategy in Fascist Italy’s Last War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), Common Destiny: Dictatorship, Foreign Policy, and War in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), and Hitler’s Italian Allies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); for an account rather sympathetic to Mussolini, see Edwin Palmer Hoyt, Mussolini’s Empire: The Rise and Fall of the Fascist Vision (New York: Wiley, 1994); Elizabeth Wiskemann, The Rome-Berlin Axis: A Study of the Relations between Hitler and Mussolini (London: Collins, 1966); F. W. Deakin, The Brutal Friendship; Mussolini, Hitler and the Fall of Italian Fascism (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1962); W. Vincent Arnold, The Illusion of Victory: Fascist Propaganda and the Second World War (New York: Lang, 1998). Most recent is Roger Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins of the Second World War, 1933-1940 (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

On fascism after World War II, see Leonard B. Weinherg, After Mussolini: Italian NeoFascism and the Nature of Fascism (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1979); Franco Ferraresi, Threats to Democracy: The Radical Right in Italy after the War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996); and A. James Gregor, Phoenix: Fascism in Our Time (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1999.

Glossary arditi (lit. “the daring ones”). Italian shock troops during World War I; many were later followers of D’Annunzio and Mussolini. Aventino (from the hill in Rome and ancient protest led by Gaius Gracchus). Summer 1924— secession of Parliament in protest over the assassination of the socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti. camicie nere (also squadristi; lit. “black shirts”). Mussolini’s followers, often perpetrators of arson, physical assaults, and assassination of political opponents. Caporetto World War I battle in October-November 1917; Italy’s worst military defeat, when the very nation appeared on the brink of surrender; instead, Italy rallies on to victory with the Vittorio, Veneto offensive of October-November 1918. CLN/CLNAI (Committee of National Liberation/Committee of National Liberation for Northern Italy). The political arm of the armed Resistance. Formally convened in September 1943 and composed of five parties: Liberal, Christian Democrat, Socialist, Communist, and Action. confino The practice of internal or domestic exile, often to one of the penal islands such as Ustica or Lipari or to a remote village in the Mezzogiorno. Dopolavoro (lit. “Afterwork”). Fascist organization that organized and regulated leisure time and activities; sought to harness mass culture to the political demands of the fascist regime. Duce (from the Latin dux, leader). A form of address for Mussolini used to evoke the Roman past. Fascio di combattimento The first groups of fascists organized 23 March 1919 in Milan’s Piazza San Sepolcro. FIAT (Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Italiani) The automobile factory works in Turin owned by the Agnelli family; site of the largest communist worker’s organization and strikes against the regime in 1943-1945. Fosse Ardeatine Cave outside Rome where, on 24 March 1944, Nazis executed 335 men and boys in retaliation for a partisan attack (see Via Rasella). fuorusciti Anti-fascist political exiles, ranging from monarchists and Liberals to socialists, communists, and members of Justice and Liberty/Action Party. GAP (Gruppi di Azione Patriottica) Armed communist anti-fascists engaged in guerilla

actions against fascists and Nazis; often termed “bandits” or “outlaws” by the fascist and Nazi authorities. me ne frego! (lit. “I don’t give a damn!”) Fascist motto of contempt. Mezzogiorno (lit. “midday,” “land of the midday sun”) The southern regions of Italy (beginning just south of Rome) and including the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, traditionally exploited and underdeveloped, with high rates of illiteracy, unemployment, and poverty. manganello (lit. “little club”) A favorite weapon of the fascist squadristi and camicie nere. MSI (Movimento Sociale Italiano) A neofascist party formed in December 1946 by former fascist officials of the RSI. MVSN (Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale) Voluntary Militia for National Security, formed 1 February 1923 in an attempt to bring the sqaudristi under the control of the new fascist state. OVRA (Opera Vigilianza per la Repressione Antifascista) A special police organization established in 1927 to discover and imprison anti-fascists. passo romano (lit. “Roman step”) Introduced into the Italian military after the Rome-Berlin Axis and similar to the Nazi goose step. podestà A local fascist government official who usurped the powers and responsibilities of the more traditional (and autonomous) sindaco (mayor), consiglio communale (communal council), and giunta provinciale (provincial administrative committee). Quadrumvir Four fascists appointed by Mussolini to direct the “March on Rome”: Emilio De Bono, Cesare Maria De Vecchi, Italo Balbo, and Michele Bianchi; later members of the Fascist Grand Council. ras Local paramilitary fascist officials; often responsible for “punitive expeditions” against anti-fascists, especially in the countryside. Regina Coeli (lit. “Queen of Heaven”) A notorious prison in Rome. Romanità (lit. “Romaness”) The cultural policy in fascist Italy of portraying contemporary fascist Italy as the heir to ancient Rome; classicism corrupted for the fascist political program. RSI (Repubblica Sociale Italiana) The Italian Social Republic (September 1943-April 1945) established with Hitler’s assistance after Mussolini’s fall from power. Controversy still rages over whether the RSI was a legitimate form of government, worthy of the loyalty of patriotic Italians, or a puppet regime controlled by a foreign power (the Nazis). Also known as the Salò Republic. san sepolcristi See fascio di combattimento. squadristi See camicie nere. trinceristi (lit. “those from the trenches”) Veterans of World War I who found it difficult to

return to civilian life and who were often attracted to the military ethos and lifestyle of fascism. Via Rasella. The site of a communist partisan attack against German military unit that killed thirty-three soldiers; in retaliation, Hitler ordered ten Italians shot for each German. (See also Fosse Ardeatine.) Via Tasso. The headquarters, of the Nazi Gestapo and SS in Rome; notorious for the torture and executions of soldiers, anti-fascists, and civilians that took place there. ventennio (lit. “twenty years”) The two decades of fascist rule.

Index Academy of the Crusca Acerbo Law Action Party (Partito d’Azione) Africa Orientale Italiana (AOI) Agarossi, Elena Agenzia Stefania L’Agnese va a morire Agosti, Giorgio Alfieri, Vittorio Alleanza del Lavoro Alleanza Nazionale Allied Military Government Almansi, Dante Almirante, Giorgio Amendola, Giovanni anarchists/anarchism Ancona Anderson, Sherwood Angier, Carole anti-fascism: actionist. (See Action Party; Carlo Rosselli; Carlo Levi; Cesare Pavese; Ada Gobetti); and armed resistance; anthems; anti-Catholicism; Catholic; communist. (See also PCI); documenting fascist crimes; early. (See also Aventine Secession); historiography/ interpretations; liberal; literary ; manifesto; memoirs; organizations. (See Arditi del Popolo; Aventine Secession; Concentrazione Antifascista); and the peasants; postwar challenge to; press; socialist. (See also PSI); and the state anti-Semitism Apollo Belvedere Aque e terre architecture Ardeatine Caves (massacre) arditi Arditi del Popolo L’Arditi del popolo Arditi Rossi Aretino Asor Rosa, Alberto Associazione Nazionale Arditi d’ltalia Associazione Nazionale Partigiani Auschwitz Austria-Hungary autarchy Avanti! Aventine Secession A Year of Fascist Domination Badoglio, Marshal Pietro Balbo, Italo Baldassarre, Antonio

Balilla Barcelona Barker, A. J. battaglia del grano Battaglia, Roherto “battle of manifestos,” Bauhaus Bella ciao Bencini, Antonio Benelli, Sem Ben-Ghiat, Ruth Benincasa, Gennaro Beretto, Amedeo Berezin, Mabel Bergamo Prize Bergson, Henri Berlusconi, Minister Silvio Berneri. Camillo bersaglieri Bertolucci, Bernardo Bianchi, Michele Bianco, Dante Livio bicycle racing Blasetti, Alessandro Bobbio, Norberto Bocca, Giorgio Bolshevism/Bolsheviks Bonassia, Antonio Bonifica Integrale Bonomi, Ivanoe Bontempelli, Massimo Bordiga, Amedeo Borghese, Prince Junio Valerio Bosworth, R. J. B. Bottai, Giuseppe Brin, Irene Bruni, Frank Buonavia, Gaetano cafoni Calamandrei, Piero Calvin, John Camerini, Mario Camillo Benso di Cavour, Count Cammett, John M. Campanini, Pietro Cannistraro, Philip V. Canto of Ulysses Caporetto Caracciolo, Nicola Carità, Mario Carnera, Primo Caro, Annibal Carocci, Giampiero Carrà, Carlo Carta della Scuola Caruso, Pietro cassa rnrale

Catalonia Catholic Action (Azione Cattolica Italiana) Catholic Church Cecchi, Emilio censorship Centro Sperimentale cli Cinematografia Centro Gobetti (Turin) Cervi, Alcide Cessi, Anselmo Charter of Labor Chiattone. Mario Christian Democracy (DC) Ciano, Costanzo Ciano, Galeazzo Cinecittà cinema Cinematografo civil war civil service Coffey, Thomas M. Cold War Columbia University Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (CLN) Comitato Napoletano di Liberazione Communist Action Squads Concentrazione Antifascista (CA) concretismo Confederazione Generale di Lavoro (CGL) confino The Conformist La Conquista dello stato consumer culture convegno per la cultura fascista Cooke, Philip Corbière, Tristan Corelli, Arcangelo Corpo Volontari Libertà Corpo di Truppe Volontarie corporativism/corporate state Corradini, Enrico Corrin, Jay P. La coscienza di Zeno Cosima Counter Reformation Cremona Prize Cristo si è fermato a Eboli cristiani La Critica Critica fascista Croce, Benedetto Cronache del Regime cult of death cult of genius culto del passato cultural policy D’Annabile, Nicola D’Annunzio, Gabriele (Prince of Montenevoso)

Dannecker, SS Captain Theodor Dante Davanzati, Roberto Forges De Ambris, Alceste De Benedetti, Giacomo de Bosis, Lauro De Chirico, Giorgio De Felice, Renzo De Gasperi, Alcide De Grand, Alexander De Grazia, Victoria De Rivera, Primo De Ruggiero, Guido De Vecchi, Cesare Maria Decima Mas “Degenerate Art” exhibition Deledda, Grazia demographics Denmark La Difesa della Razza Diario partigiano Di Nicola, Enrico diplomatic corps Doni, Antonfrancesco Dopolavoro Draper, Ruth Duke of Aosta Duse, Eleonora Eco, Umberto economics education Eichmann, Adolf 1860 The 18th Brumaire Einaudi publishing house Einaudi, Luigi Emerson, Ralph Waldo Enciclopedia italiana Energie Nuove Entente Ethiopia/Ethiopian War EUR (Esposizione Universale di Roma) Exceptional Decrees Facta, Luigi families Farrell, Nicholas Farinacci, Roberto. fasci di comhattimento Fasci Feminili Fascio Giovanile del Littorio fascism: agrarian vs. urban; anthems; aphorisms; birth of; comes to power; cultural policy/propaganda; economic policy; and education; historiography/interpretations ; ideology; “imperfect totalitarianism,” ; and imperialism; massacres/murders; as “movement,” 6-7; and nationalism; overcomes Matteotti crisis; “punitive expeditions,” ; and racial policy. (See racism, antiSemitism); as “regime,” ; revolutionary vs. reactionary: and Silvio Berlusconi; sources; totalitarian; and Vatican; and women Federzoni, Luigi Fenoglio, Beppe

Fermi, Enrico Ferrara Ferraresi, Franco Feuerbach, Ludwig Le Figaro Figli di Nessuno Fini, Gianfranco Finzi, Aldo Fischia il vento Fiume Florence Foà, Ugo Fontamara Forli Fossati, Antonio Fossoli Fourteen Points France Franco, Francisco Franco-Prussian War French Revolution Frescobaldi, Girolamo fuorusciti futurism/futurists. “fuzzy” totalitarianism Gadda, Carlo Emilio Galcii, Gerolamo Galli Della Loggia, Ernesto Gallone, Carmine Garibaldi, Giuseppe Garibaldi Brigades gmerazione del Genina, Augusto Genoa Gentile, Emilio Gentile, Giovanni Gerarchia Germany. See also Nazi Germany Germinal Germino. Dante Gesamtkunstwerk, fascist Gestapo Gibson, Violet Ginzburg, Natalia Giolitti, Giovanni Giorgi, Francesco Giornale d’Italia La Giornata delle Fede (propaganda poster) Giovine Italia Giovinezza Giroldi, Guido Gleason, Abbott Gli indifferenti Gohetti, Ada Gobetti, Piero Goerring, Hermann gold ransom

Golclhagen, Daniel J. Gourmont, Rene de Gracchus, Gaius graffiti Gramsci, Antonio Il grande appello Grandi, Dino Greece Gropius, Walter Gruppi Universitari Fascisti (GUF) Guadalajara, battle of. Harvard University Hegel High Commission for the Expurgation of Fascism Historikerstriet Hitler, Adolf Holocaust Holub, Renate Horn, David G. imperialism industrialization/industrialists inner emigration intcllectuals Interlandi, Telesio IRI (Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industrial) irrationalism Istituto Nazionale di Cultura Fascista Italia Libera Italian Nationalist Association Jemolo, Arturo Carlo Jews Johnson, Boris Jona, Giuseppe Joseph Goebbels Joyce, James Jung, Guido Justice and Liberty (Giustizia e Libertà) Kappler, SS Major Herbert Katz, Robert Ketkin, Clara Keynes, John Maynard Killinger, Charles King, Bolton Klopp, Charles Koch, Mario La Malfa. Ugo La Scala Lacerba land owners Lateran Accords Leake, Elizabeth League of Nations Le Bon, Gustav Lega Proletaria Lega Internazionale dei Diritti dell’Uomo (LIDU)

Lenin Levi, Carlo Levi, Primo liberal socialism La Libertà Libyan War Lindbergh, Charles Lipari literature LUCE (L’Unione Cinematografica Educativa) Luke, (xxii) Luther, Martin Lybia Madonna of Pompeii Malaparte, Curzio (Kurt Eric Suckert) Malatesta, Errico Maluberti, Enrico Manifesto of Verona Manzoni, Giuseppe March on Rome Marconi, Guglielmo Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso Marx, Karl/Marxism Il Marzocco Matera Matteotti, Giacomo Matteotti crisis May-Day Mazzini, Giuseppe Mazzoni, Guido Il mestiere di vivere Mezzogiorno Michaelis, Meir Michel, Henri Michelet, Jules Mikine-Guetzevitch, Boris Milan Ministry of National Education Ministry of Popular Culture (“Minculpop”) Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment Minucci, Gaetano Minzoni, Don Giovanni Mit brennender Sorge modernism/modernization Moholy-Nagy, Gustav monarchy/monarchists Il Mondo Mondolfo, Rodolfo Montale, Eugenio Morandi, Giorgio Moravia, Alberto Morbiducci, Publio Morini, Raimondo Morpurgo, Carlo La morte della patria Mosca, Gaetano “most fascist reform,”

Mostra aeronautica Mostra della moda. Mostra della rivoluzione fascista Mostra delle colonie estive e assistenza all’infanzia Mostra dell’istruzione tecnica. movimento italiana d’architettura razionalista MSI (Movimento Sociale Italiano) Mudge, Jean McClure Musella, Pasquale Museo Storico della Liberazione di Rome music Mussolini, Benito ; aphorisms; cult of the Duce; declares war; defines fascism; deposed; establishes fascism; and Gabriele D’Annunzio; and Hitler; implicated in assassination of Matteotti; March on Rome; plot to assassinate; and RSI; as socialist; speech of January ; speech of March Mussolini, Rachele MVSN (Milizia Volontario per la Sicurezza Nazionale) Myrdal, Alva mysticism myths Naples Napoleon Napoleon National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale) nationalism “national syndicalism,” Nazi Germany/National Socialism NBC Radio Orchestra Nenni, Piero neo-fascism Nerenberg, Ellen Nervi, Pier Luigi New World Order New York newspeak Nietzsche, Friedrich Nitti, Francesco Saverio Nobel Prize Non Mollare! Non abbiamo bisogno Novecento Nuoro, Sardinia Nuova Antologia Nuova italiana oath of loyalty (to fascism) October Office of Demography and Race The Officers Camp Ojetti, Ugo Opera Nazionale Balilla L’Ordine Nuouo Orini, Domenico Camillucci di, Orlando, Vittorio Emanuele Orton, H. Marie Ossi di seppia Ottoman Empire Ovazza, ettore

Pacification Pact Pact of Steel painting Paladini, Arrigo Palazzeschi, Aldo Palazzo Chigi Pact Palazzo Vidoni Pact Papini, Giovanni Pareto, Vilfredo Paris Paris Decorative Arts Exhibition Parri, Ferruccio Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) Partito Liberale Italiano (PLI) Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF) Partito Popolare Italiano (PPI) Partito Repubblicano Italiano (PRI) Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI) passive resistance passo romano pauperism Pavese, Cesare Pavone, Claudio Paynter, Maria Nicholai PCI. See Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) peasants Pegasus Pellizzi, Camillo Pensiero antifascista Petacci, Clara Petroni, Guglielmo Piacentini, Marcello Piazza Loreto Piazza San Sepolcro Piccinini. Antonio Pickering-Iazzi, Robin Pirandello, Luigi Pisino, Antonio PLI. See Partito Liberale Italiano (PLI) Po River valley Pontine marshes Pope Pius XI (Achille Ratti) Pope Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) It Popolo d’Italia Portalupi, Vittorio Portelli, Alessandro post-fascism/post-fascists POWs PPI. See Partito Popolare Italiano (PPI) Pravda press Prezzolini, Giuseppe PRI. See Partito Repubblicano Italiano (PRI) Priebke, Erich, SS Captain “proletarian nationalism,” Protestantism PSI. See Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI) PSU

Puccini, Giacomo Pugliese, General Emanuele Quaderni del carcere Quasimodo, Salvatore Racial Laws/manifesto racism radio Radio Barcelona Radio London Radio Vaticana RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana) Ravenna realism/neo-realism Reformation Regina Coeli prison Repubblica Sociale Italiana (RSI/Republic of Salò) Resistance “vulgate,” Respighi, Ottorino Riccardi, Giuseppe Richards, Vernon Risorgimento/unification of Italy La Rivolozione Liberale Roberts, David D. Robertson, Pat Robespierre Rocco, Alfredo. Rolland, Romain Roman Forum romanità Romano, Lina Roman Republic (1849) romanticism Rome-Berlin Axis Romeo, Rosario Rommel, Field Marshal Irwin Rosai, Ottone Rosselli, Carlo. Rosselli, Nello Rosso e nero Rotoli, Giovanni Royal Academy of Italy Rusconi, Antonio Russia Russian Expeditionary Force Sala, Raimondo Salandra, Antonio Salvadori, Massimo Salvatorelli, Luigi Salvemini, Gaetano Sansone, Renato Luigi Santarosa, Annibale Sant’Elia, Antonio Sarfatti, Margherita Sarzana Schnapp, Jeffrey T. Scipione l’Africano

scugnizzi sculpture Secondari, Argo Segrè, Claudio Il Selvaggio Selvini, Giardini Settembrini, Domenico settimana rossa Shah of Iran. Silone, Ignazio Sironi, Salvatore Slashings soccer social fascism socialists Soffici, Ardengo Sole Soleri Sorel, Georges Soviet Union Spackman, Barbart Spanish Civil War Special Tribunal for the Defense of the State spectacle sports squadristi/squadrismo Squadrone biaoco SS Stalin Starace, Achille state Steinbeck, John stile littorio Stille, Alexander Stone, Marla Storia della Resistenza Strapaese Sturzo, Don Luigi Sullivan, Brian R. Suruival in Auschwitz (If This is a Man) Svevo, Italo Swift, Jonathan syndicalism Tasca, Angelo Tasso, Torquato Tedeschi, Giuliana television Terracini, Umberto Thomson, Ian Tobruk Togliatti, Palmiro Tomkins, Peter Toscanini, Arturo Tosini, Guido totalitarianism Tranfaglia, Nicola Treaty of London

Treaty of Versailles Treccani, Giovanni Trentin, Silvio Tresca, Carlo trinceristi Trotsky, Leon Turati, Augusto Turati, Filippo Turin Ubermerzsch (“superman”) Umanità Nuova Ungaretti, Giuseppe Unione Anarchica Italiana Unione Democratica Nazionate Unione Sindacale Italiana Unity of Action Pact universities University of Florence University of Turin uomo qualullque Urban, Joan Barth Ur-Fascism Vais, Mario Nunes Vatican. See Catholic Church Vecchia Guarda Venice Biennale Venice Film Festival Vercelli Verdi, Giuseppe Versailles Peace Conference Vesuvius Via Imperiali Vialli, Giovanni Via Rasella Via Tasso Vichy, France Vico, Giambattista Vittorio Emanuele Vittorio Emanuele Viganò, Renata Vignati, Carlo Villari, Luihi Violante, Luciano Vittorini, Elio Vittorio Veneto Vivaldi, Antonio Vivarelli, Robeito Volpe, Gioacchino Walton, James war generation Ward, David Webster, Richard A. Weininger, Otto Wetjen, Obersturmfuehrer Whitaker, Elizabeth Dixon Whitman

Wilson, Woodrow Wolff, SS General Karl Wolf, Richard J. women World Cup and The World Is a Prison World War World War youth Zaniratti, Enzo Zuccotti, Susan

About the Editor Stanislao G. Pugliese is associate professor of history at Hofstra University. He is the author of Carlo Rosselli: Socialist Heretic and Antifascist Exile and, most recently, Desperate Inscriptions: Graffiti From the Nazi Prison in Rome, 1943-1944.